Ilija Trojanow


Ilija Trojanow, also transliterated as Ilya Troyanov, is a Bulgarian-German writer, translator and publisher.
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Life and literary career

Trojanow was born in Sofia, People's Republic of Bulgaria in 1965. In 1971, his family fled Bulgaria through the SFR Yugoslavia and Italy to West Germany, where they received political asylum. In 1972, the family travelled on to Kenya, where Ilija's father Marin had obtained a job as engineer. With one interruption from 1977 to 1981, Ilija Trojanow lived in Nairobi until 1984, and attended the German School Nairobi. After a stay in Paris, he studied law and ethnology at Munich University from 1985 to 1989. He interrupted these studies to found Kyrill-und-Method-Verlag in 1989, and after that Marino-Verlag in 1992, both of which specialised in African literature. In 1999 Trojanow moved to Mumbai and became intensely involved with Indian life and culture. He has lived in Cape Town, returned to Germany, and then to Austria, where he currently resides in Vienna.
In the 1990s Trojanow wrote several non-fiction and travel books about Africa, published an anthology of contemporary African literature and translated African authors into German. His first novel, Die Welt ist groß und Rettung lauert überall, appeared in 1996. In it he recounts his family's experiences as political refugees and asylum seekers. After that appeared the science fiction novel Autopol, created on the Internet as a "novel in progress," Hundezeiten, a travel account of a visit to his Bulgarian homeland, and books dealing with his experiences in India. His reportage Zu den heiligen Quellen des Islam describes a pilgrimage to Mecca.
Since 2002, Ilija Trojanow has been member of the PEN centre of the Federal Republic of Germany. Among other awards he received the Bertelsmann Literature Prize at the Ingeborg Bachmann competition in Klagenfurt in 1995, the Marburg Literature Prize in 1996, the Thomas Valentin Prize in 1997, the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize in 2000 and the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in the category of fiction for his novel Der Weltensammler.
Published in English as The Collector of Worlds in 2006, this novel was inspired by the biography and travel writings of British colonial officer Richard Francis Burton, some of whose travels Trojanow followed to places in present-day India, Saudi Arabia or Tanzania.
In 2014, Trojanow participated in the writer in residence programme of the one world foundation in Sri Lanka.

Miscellaneous

In 2013, Trojanow, who has also written on freedom of expression and surveillance of citizens by government agencies in Germany, had criticized the National Security Agency. In the same year, he was denied entry into the US for undisclosed reasons. He planned to attend an academic conference. Upon intervention by representatives of the P.E.N. and the German cultural institution Goethe-Institut, he could finally travel to New York at the end of 2013.

Works

  • In Afrika, Munich, 1993
  • Naturwunder Ostafrika, Munich, 1994
  • Hüter der Sonne, Munich, 1996
  • Kenia mit Nordtansania, Munich, 1996
  • Die Welt ist groß und Rettung lauert überall, Munich, 1996
  • Autopol, Munich, 1997
  • Zimbabwe, Munich, 1998
  • Hundezeiten, Munich, 1999
  • Der Sadhu an der Teufelswand, Munich, 2001
  • An den inneren Ufern Indiens, Munich, 2003
  • Zu den heiligen Quellen des Islam, Munich, 2004
  • Der Weltensammler, Munich, 2006
  • Indien. Land des kleinen Glücks, Cadolzburg, 2006
  • Gebrauchsanweisung für Indien, Munich, 2006
  • Die fingierte Revolution. Bulgarien, eine exemplarische Geschichte, Munich, 2006
  • Nomade auf vier Kontinenten, Frankfurt, 2007
  • Kampfabsage. Kulturen bekämpfen sich nicht – sie fließen zusammen, Munich, 2007
  • Der entfesselte Globus, Munich, 2008
  • Sehnsucht, Freiburg, 2008 Kumbh Mela. Das größte Fest der Welt, München 2008 Angriff auf die Freiheit. Sicherheitswahn, Überwachungsstaat und der Abbau bürgerlicher Rechte, Munich 2009 EisTau, Munich, 2011 Die Versuchungen der Fremde: Unterwegs in Arabien, Indien und Afrika, Munich, 2011Confluences: Forgotten Histories From East And West, New Delhi, Yoda Press 2012 Der überflüssige Mensch, Salzburg, 2013Macht und Widerstand, Frankfurt am Main 2015Meine Olympiade, Frankfurt am Main, 2016Nach der Flucht, Frankfurt am Main, 2017Doppelte Spur, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2020,

English translations

  • Custodians of the Sun
  • Along the Ganges, translation by Ranjit Hoskote, Penguin Books India & Haus Publishing, 2005
  • Mumbai to Mecca, London, 2007, Haus Publishing
  • The Collector of Worlds, London, 2008
  • The Lamentations of Zeno, translation by Philip Boehm of Eis Tau, Verso Books, New York, 2016

Publishing

  • Afrikanissimo, Wuppertal, 1991
  • Das Huhn das schreit gehört dem Fremden, Munich, 1998
  • Döner in Walhalla, Cologne, 2000
  • Die Welt des Ryszard Kapuściński. Seine besten Geschichten und Reportagen, Frankfurt, 2007
  • Egon Erwin Kisch. Die schönsten Geschichten und Reportagen, Berlin, 2008

Translations into German

Film adaptations