Valeri Petrov is one of the most talented and innovative Bulgarian writers in the period after World War II. He is also the most culturally sophisticated among his literary peers. The brilliant combination of imagination and erudition that manifested itself when Petrov was barely twenty paradoxically deferred full recognition of his achievements for some two decades. Between the 1940s and the 1960s Marxist critics were unable to appreciate the novelty of Petrov's work, which stands apart from and above the literary criteria of that time. Petrov is a poet, screenwriter, playwright, and translator; he writes for adults and children, and in all these fields he has made his mark. Petrov has been a lifelong adherent to the ideas of communism. The combination of his intellectual honesty, civic courage, and unselfishness in political matters represents one of the few instances in Bulgarian literature and culture after World War II...