Exactly fifty two years back to the date of its original publication, Ayn Rand’s magnum opus Atlas Shrugged saw the light of day in the Bulgarian language. On October 10, 2009, MaK and East-West [Iztok-zapad] publishing houses unveiled Part I of the Bulgarian edition of the book with a celebration at Grand Hotel Bulgaria in Sofia with more than 120 of Rand’s fans present. The book was presented by the publisher Kalin Manolov, the translator Petio Angelov, the editor Iskra Angelova, and the economist Lachezar Bogdanov.
Atlas Shrugged has been around for more than fifty years in the English speaking world, but it still finds new reader and is regularly reprinted and sold successfully in all major bookstores. The book’s theme, an anti-utopian warning of a government takeover of the United States free market economy, may have precipitated a renewed interest toward the works of Ayn Rand, due to the intricacies of the current economic policies of the American government. There is no doubt the Atlas Shrugged belongs to the literary history, and that Rand’s concept of free-wheeling capitalism have left its mark on the political discourse during the Cold War.
Although the central topic of the book and the writer’s own philosophical views are pretty much a moot point in the Western world where no one seriously fear a communist dictatorship anymore, even with the looming global economic crisis, they may find resonance with the readers in Bulgaria which has had only a short and uncertain experience with capitalism and democracy.
At the opening was also the founding of the Ayn Rand society in Bulgaria, which will strive to explain and promote the writer’s works and ideas.
Emil Lazarov
