Kalchev, Kamen

(real name, Petr). Born July 31, 1914, in the village of Kereka, Gabrovo Okrug. Bulgarian writer. People’s Worker of Culture of Bulgaria (1972). Became a member of the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1938.

Kalchev’s first novella was Wayfarer From the Mountain (1938). The themes of his novels are the heroism of the antifascist movement (The Living Remember, 1950), socialist transformation in the village (On the Border, 1953), and the moral conflicts of contemporary life (A Family of Weavers, 1956–60; Russian translation, 1959). The appearance of his novel Two in a New City (1964; Russian translation, 1967), his novella At the Sources of Life (1964), and his collection Sofia Stories (1967) were significant events in Bulgarian literature. Kalchev wrote a fictionalized biography of G. Dimitrov, Son of the Working Class (1949; Russian translation, 1962). In 1962–63 he was chairman of the Union of Bulgarian Writers, and since 1966 he has been the editor in chief of the literary journal Sentemvri. He was awarded the Dimitrov Prize in 1950.