Daskalov, Stoian Tsekov

Born Aug. 22, 1909. in the village of Liliache, located in Vratsa province. Bulgarian writer and People’s Cultural Worker of Bulgaria (1967). Member of the Bulgarian Communist Party since 1944.

Daskalov graduated from the history-philology department at the University of Sofia. His works began to be published in the early 1930’s. In the 1930’s and early 1940’s, Daskalov portrayed realistically the difficult life of the Bulgarian peasant in his collections of short stories. His epic novel Journey (books 1–3, 1945–54) portrays the rise of political awareness among the Bulgarian peasants and their participation in the antifascist partisan movement. The novels The Windmill of Lipovanskii (1951) and One’s Own Land (1952) depict how the surviving instinct for private ownership was overcome during the period of cooperation. The novels The Linden Trees of Stuble (1960) and The Republic of Rain (1968) and his novellas of the 1960’s deal with the new conflicts that existed during the formation of the socialist morality. Daskalov also wrote a collection of short stories for children. In 1950 and 1969 he was awarded the Dimitrov Prize.