April 25, 2026 | Saturday | 4:30 p.m.

City Stage

(underground level)   

 

Second Premiere:

Intra and The Other Dream

 

Host:

Miglena Nikolchina

Participants:

Nikolay Genov and Chavdar Parushev

 

Second Premiere is an event where we revisit some of the most significant titles in contemporary Bulgarian literature. We come together to discuss them anew, because literature of importance is not only relevant at the moment of its publication. No one reads only new books, but we all love to talk about the books we find important. It was precisely from this perspective that writer Iana Boukova proposed and created the first Second Premiere during Literary Talks Sofia in 2025.

This year, the winners were Miglena Nikolchina — a professor at Sofia University and author of books of poetry, prose, and theoretical studies — along with Chavdar Parushev — a Ph.D. in Literary Theory and adjunct lecturer in the Digital Media and Video Games master’s program at the Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication at Sofia University, and Nikolay Genov — a PhD in Literary Theory and senior assistant professor at the Institute of Literature at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Of course, both books are related to “Dystopia and Resistance” — the theme of this year’s Literary Talks Sofia.

The three authors of books in the “Human/Non-Human” series published by Versus Publishing House will bring back from the ashes the novel Intra (1989) by philosopher Nedyalka Mihova, as well as the novel The Other Dream (2016) by Vladimir Poleganov, which did not go entirely unnoticed but, in the opinion of Nikolchina, Parushev, and Genov, deserves much greater recognition. The two novels explore “displaced” states of consciousness and the dilemmas arising from this displacement. Mihova’s Intrians are devoid of emotions, but not — as is commonly believed — due to excessive rationality, but rather because of their excess of fusion. Unaware of separations and surfaces, the Intrians are so directly connected within a collective consciousness that there is no need for them to communicate. In Polaganov's work, the path is reversed— from the sorrowful "unfolding" of a single individual consciousness — toward what seems to be the same result. His character has no skin; he is dispersed. He is inscribed in objects, and they all have memory; they all think in some way: wherever he passes, the objects absorb him; he is in osmosis with them, much like the Intrians, who are devoid of individual boundaries, and thus excludes that “You and I” which makes communication possible… The consequences of Mihova and Poleganov’s artistic experiments with the disappearance of individual distinction offer an opportunity for a conversation about our current situation of networked hypersconnection and its dystopian risks.

 

More about the participants:

Miglena Nikolchina is a professor at Sofia University. She is the author of books of poetry Gradat na amazonkite /The City of the Amazons/, prose Bilet za Vega /Ticket to Vega/, and theoretical studies Bog s mashina. Izvazhdane na choveka /God with a Machine: The Subtraction of Man/. Her research interests lie in the fields of literary studies, contemporary philosophy, game studies, and artistic utopianism. Her monograph Psihicheska revolyucia na materiata. Opiti vurhu Julia Kristeva /A Psychic Revolution of Matter: Essays on Julia Kristeva/ is currently in press.
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Chavdar Parushev holds a Ph.D. in Literary Theory and is an adjunct lecturer in the Digital Media and Video Games master’s program at the Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication at Sofia University. He graduated with a degree in Bulgarian Philology from the same university in 2008, and subsequently completed the Translator-Editor master’s program there in 2010. He successfully defended his thesis in the Department of Literary Theory at the Faculty of Slavic Philology in 2015. He is the author of the book Sreshtuchoveshkoto: Antiutopichniqt janr v literaturata prez XX vek /The Anti-Human: The Dystopian Genre in 20th-Century Literature/ and the recipient of the 2014 Award for Literary Criticism “13 Veka Bulgaria”. His research interests lie in the field of fantasy in literature, cinema, and video games.
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Nikolay Genov holds a Ph.D. in Literary Theory and is a senior research associate at the Institute of Literature at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. In 2017, he graduated with a degree in Bulgarian Philology from Sofia University, and in 2018, he completed a master’s program in Literary Studies at the same university. He defended his doctoral dissertation in 2022 at the Faculty of Slavic Philology. His research interests lie in the fields of fantasy literature, digital media, and video games. He is the author of the book Virtualniyat chovek: Opit vurhu fantomatikata (2022) /The Virtual Man: An Essay on Phantomatics/. His writings have been published in various academic journals, anthologies, and online platforms.