The great lady of the Bulgarian detective novel Donka Petrunova before Bulgarian Diplomatic Review

Donka Petrunova was born in Sofia. She graduated from the Academy of Agriculture in agromelioration. She started work in “Senokos” Machine and Tractor Station in Dobrudzha but driven by her literary calling she fully devoted herself to journalism. She worked for the newspapers Zemedelsko Zname and Kooperativno Selo (at present Zemya), and for the longest period – in the prestigious magazine Zhenata Dnes.

Gradually the journalist Donka Petrunova started establishing herself also as a talented and prolific writer. Her name became popular in 1986 when her book “The Gray Home”, the first serious journalistic study on female crime, came out. In the traditional inquiry of ABV newspaper, the readers chose the book “The Gray Home” as the best book of 1986. Donka Petrunova used the same method of personal observation in writing “Fatal Deviations” – she entered as a patient the Clinic for Alcoholism and Drug Addictions in Suhodol. The book topped the list as the most wanted book of the month, though its total print was 50 000 copies. Because of these two books and the following novels, “The Hundred and First Face of Love” and “Outwitting the Devil”, she was characterized as “a scandalous writer” and although people borrowed her books from one another the Writer’s Union refused to admit her as its member because she “disgraced the glorious cause of socialism” showing the most unpleasant sides of life and the back yard of society. After November 10, 1989 Donka Petrunova remained faithful to the topical issues of the day. She is the first writer to enter mafia waters. Despite the fact that the Ministers of the Interior at that time claimed there was no mafia in the country, she portrayed its birth in the novel “The Poisonous Spider”. The next one, “The Snake’s Tail” showed the gangster wars for redistribution of territories and “The Big Outsmarting” exposed the corruption and the role of dirty money in running the country. The three novels are gathered in one book called “Mafia Romance”. This trilogy brought her the first Big Prize for Literature of the Academy of the Ministry of the Interior. Her next crime novel “Delusion” dealt with drug trafficking organized by Islamic fundamentalists to fund terrorist acts and ethnic wars in the name of Gihad. This novel was translated in Macedonia. The film called “The Righteous Foursome” was based on one of her novellas. Her works have been translated in Russian, Spanish, Slovak. Beside crime stories Donka Petrunova also writes about the innermost personal problems of contemporary people such as loneliness (“Presence of a Man”), the courage to survive even when God himself is against you (“Woman on Target”), the furious ambition to succeed, which sometimes can cost your life (“Mystery Villa”). Her latest crime novel “The Fifth Power” makes the number of her books fifty. The Ministry of Culture awarded Donka Petrunova an honorary diploma for her overall contribution to Bulgarian culture. She is a member of the Union of Bulgarian Writers and the Union of Bulgarian Journalists. For some years she has been a member of the World Organization of Crime-Story Writers (AIEP).

You are the first Bulgarian writer to write about the mafia long before talk about its presence in the country started. What provoked your interest?
The challenge of the changes, which took place in Bulgaria after 1989. The building of a market economy started, the first Bulgarian builders of capitalism appeared, the hope for a radical change in the social climate was blossoming. Unfortunately, evil was stirring too. The force groups were forming and the channels for smuggling weapons, drugs, prostitutes, stolen cars, petrol, cigarettes, alcohol, etc. were swarming. The “bats” started administering justice. Crime got organized very quickly. Rumors of “godfathers” started. Greedy rulers, policemen, magistrates and custom officers covered dirty deals for millions. And though the first governments after 1989 denied the presence of mafia in the country, it was categorically imposing itself even in the legal economy.

Why did you call your latest novel “The Fifth Power”?
Because there is a real dictatorship of the mafia already. It is fifth only in the order of appearance, in reality it operates as the first.

It sounds quite scary!
But it is true. The poor are multiplying and the rich are growing richer. Personal interest is replacing the public interest. I was shocked to read in one and the same newspaper information on the cigars smoked by MPs, ministers and other Bulgarian men from the elite, each cigar costing 10 to 20 levs! And the next page told of a tragedy – an old man threw his sick grandchild over the balcony because he could not afford to take care of her with his meager pension and then he took his own life. And I asked myself, if these “people’s people” did without even one cigar a day, how many sick and impoverished children can be saved?

You describe the protagonist of “The Fifth Power” Kosta Djurov as a symbolic figure of the transition from socialism to capitalism. Why is that?
The characters in this and in other of my novels are indeed symbolic figures. Totally unknown until recently, in a few years only they managed to accumulate such wealth, acquire such economic power that they became part of the country is elite. The new stage these people are entering is marked by their strive to exercise power. They buy themselves MPs, have lobbies in Parliament, they dictate the policy of governments. If we do not become a country of strict rules and laws, we shall be governed by the ex-bandits and their children. And then… God help us!