Georgi Tenev

Who is Georgi Tenev?

Georgi Tenev is a Bulgarian novelist, short story writer, playwright and film/TV screenwriter.

Major topics in Tenev’s works are the cultural and ideological void in the post-totalitarian societies and the consequent emerging of counter-cultures; the fall of utopias and the social amnesias. Recurring narratives in his novels and plays are also quasi-religion and disbelief, barbarism and revolution, the Holocaust, problem of evil, theodicy. In his recent writings he often addresses environmental issues.

His collection Holy Light is a book of science fiction short stories featuring mainly issues of political correctness/incorrectness and biopolitics treated in a provocative way: racism, ownership over human’s reproductive functions, sexual difference, discrimination, violence. Other topics addressed in the story collection are pain and eroticism and different political and cultural values attributed to sexuality. In 2010 translator Angela Rodel was awarded with a PEN Translation Fund Grant to support the translation of the book.

Tenev’s novel Party Headquarters deals with the social paradoxes of the post-communist Bulgarian society. The key metaphor here is the Chernobyl disaster.