Pen name Liuba Gantcheva Name Yana Yazova | Role Writer | |
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Genre Novel, poetry, travel writing Died August 1974, Sofia, Bulgaria | ||
Yana Yazova (Bulgarian: Яна Язова) was the pen name of Lyuba Todorova Gancheva (Bulgarian: Люба Тодорова Ганчева) (1912 – August 1974), a Bulgarian intellectual and writer. Her name is also transcribed as Liuba Gantcheva.
She was born in Lom and received a Master's degree in Slavic philology from Sofia University in 1935. Gancheva also studied French philology at the Sorbonne. She published a historical drama The Last of the Pagans' and a novel The Captain in 1940. From 1942 to 1943, she co-edited the children's magazine Blok with Nikola Balabanov, brother of Prof. Alexander Balabanov, her inventor and lover. Gancheva married another man in 1943. Later in life, she was pressured to write poetry promoting communism but she instead chose to become a recluse.
Her poetry was translated into Esperanto, Czech, Serbian and Ukrainian. She travelled extensively in Europe and the Near East and wrote about her travels.
Her historical novel Alexander of Macedon, the trilogy Balkans and the anti-communist novel Salt Gulf were published after her death.
She was found murdered in her home in Sofia in 1974.
Selected works
