Stefan Lazarov Kostov

Born Mar. 30, 1879, in Sofia; died there Sept. 27, 1939. Bulgarian play writer and ethnologist.

After graduating from the University of Sofia, Kostov attended courses in philology and ethnography in Vienna (1907–09). He directed the ethnographic museum in Sofia from 1909 until his death. Kostov’s first works—humorous stories and satirical sketches—were published in 1903. His comedy The Man-Hater was published in 1914 and then staged by the Bulgarian National Theater. Kostov enjoyed the greatest success with the comedies The Gold Mine (1925), Golemanov (1928), The Locusts (1931), and Vrazhelets (1933), in which he created a gallery of comic and satirical characters of bourgeois monarchist Bulgaria. Kostov followed the traditions of the critical realism of I. Vazov and A. N. Ostrovskii in his writing.