The Dialogue of Stories and Pictures

In Prince and Plague – a Relatively Late Avant-garde Project of 1931 Nikolay Rainov is one of the greatest experimenters of Bulgarian literature not just in terms of style but in terms of genre as well. His late modernist project Prince and Plague, with ‘fearful fairy tales’ and illustrations, is among the most daring ones of the fading Bulgarian avant-garde. Published in two carefully designed books with a thematic series of drawings and pictures, these works have not yet found their adequate interpretation. Announced as children books, they obviously seek for an audience more radical in its thoughts and senses. Art historians have often defined these works as ‘secessionist’ but no doubt they could be placed somewhere betweenthe extreme expressionism and the surrealism.