Iana Boukova

A pointed intellect is in charge: a restless, ironic intelligence… -Maria Topali, newspaper “Kathimerini”, Biblio, 08.04.2019; * * * * * Like Wittgenstein meeting Kafka, you might say. This “Tractatus” could well be taught at schools as an example of the difference between poetry and “poeticality”. - Orfeas Apergis, newspaper “Ta Nea”, Poetry, 03.08.2019; * * * * * Boukova manages to transfuse Balkan tradition to contemporary expressive means, to transform inner experience to extroversive manifestation, comfortably balancing at the border between modern and postmodern. Original in their conception and execution images and a poetic force which subdues sentimentalism, these are poems that any contemporary poet would aspire to write. Stavros Zafeiriou (poet), Entefktirio journal

IANA BOUKOVA

Iana Boukova Photo1 © Theodora Nishkov

Praise:

We are simultaneously the spiderweb and the spider, Boukova's poetic work seems to indicate, with its continuous engendering of connections. It transforms the trivial and self-evident, adds itself to the mystery without solving it, aware that it is a part of it, expounding an unrelenting logic.
—Katerina lliopoulou

Traveling in the Direction of the Shadow is an awesome book, an epic travelogue across times and cultures that have shaped a national history. Iana Boukova is a veritable language artist whose novel reads like a giant, seamless prose poem. Ekaterina Petrova’s translation recreates—quite miraculously and breathtakingly—the music and the matter of Boukova’s language, the complex cadences of her operatic sentences, their original rhythms and acoustic reverberations. Traveling in the Direction of the Shadow is a major event in international literature.
— Aron Aji

In inviting us to decipher the complex patterns connecting the lives she describes, while scrupulously avoiding total clarity, Boukova constructs her novel as a tantalising puzzle. For those up to the challenge, this is well worth a read.
— Priya Abularach, Literary Review(UK)

Set in the Balkans during the 19th century, the novel’s eight sections tell the life stories of eight characters in intricately rhythmical, serpentine prose.
— Bela Shayevich, N+1

Eight years in the making, Ekaterina Petrova’s translation preserves the novel’s ballad-like cadence and shifting registers, the precise strangeness of its images, the headlong energy of its long sentences . . . Lyrical, macabre, erudite, and at times even slyly comic, it describes a world in which people step into each other’s shadows and vanish—but the stories continue, seeking new bodies and readers to inhabit them.
— Rosalia Ignatova, Asymptote

A delightful book about the nestled mythologies of storytelling . . . Iana Boukova’s prose offers blistering beauty and a net of history that is sure to entangle readers.
— Michael Welch, Chicago Review of Books

We are simultaneously the spider web and the spider, Boukova’s poetic work seems to indicate, with its continuous engendering of connections. It transforms the self-evident, adds itself to the mystery without solving it, aware that it is a part of it, and expounds its unrelenting logic, stretching it to the point of absurdity. -Katerina Iliopoulou, “FRMK” magazine * * * * * The Bulgarian poet Iana Boukova with her book “The minimal garden”, in a very good translation into greek by Dimitris Allos, has easily gained herself a place in contemporary greek poetry, transplanting memory in all things, honoring with affection what is hurt or hunted, being able to look beyond the future into man’s adventure……….. Dino Siotis, (poet), (de)kata journal