Valeri Petrov

Who is Valeri Petrov?

Valeri Petrov, pseudonym of Valeri Nisim Mevorah is a popular Bulgarian poet, screenplay writer, playwright and translator of paternal Jewish origin.

Born in the capital Sofia to lawyer Nisim Mevorah and high-school French teacher Mariya Petrova, Valeri Petrov studied at the Italian School in the city, finishing in 1939. He graduated in medicine from Sofia University in 1944.

When he was 15, Valeri Petrov published his first independent book: the poem Ptitsi kam sever. In this and subsequent publications he used his non-Jewish mother's surname or other pseudonyms because of the pro-Nazi regime in Bulgaria at the time. He later wrote the poems Palechko, Na pat, Juvenes dum sumus, Kray sinyoto more, Tavanski spomen and the series Nezhnosti. Valeri Petrov is particularly esteemed for the quality of his translation of the entire works of Shakespeare - the authoritative rendition of the Bard in Bulgarian.

In the autumn and winter of 1944, when Bulgaria switched sides and joined the Allies in the Second World War, Valeri Petrov worked first at Radio Sofia and then as a wartime writer with the newspaper Frontovak. Following the war, he was among the founders of the humoristic newspaper Starshel and its assistant editor-in-chief. He served as a doctor in a military hospital and in the Rila Monastery.