Radoi Ralin, one of the most passionate Bulgarian satirists and unquestionably the best loved one, died in hospital on July 22 at the age of 81.

Radoi Ralin is the penname of Dimitar Stoyanov. Born in Sliven, South-Eastern Bulgaria on 23 April 1923, he started his poetic career with a collection entitled "Soldier's Notebook", inspired by his own World War II experience. Ralin joined the anti-fascist opposition at a very early age, but once the communists took power he was among their most outspoken critics, using Aesopian language.

The work that won Radoi Ralin the people's true love and admiration was "Lyuti Chushki" (Hot Peppers), a collection of epigrams illustrated by equally famous Bulgarian cartoonist Boris Dimovski.

The book first appeared in 1968, in a print run of 40 000. While 20 000 copies were still being printed, the first 20 000 sold out, publisher Boris Tashev wrote in the preface to the second edition. At first, sales were certainly brisk but not overwhelming. But after it had been on the stands for a week, word got around that the book contained an illustration of a pig whose tail was the scribbled signature of the country's communist ruler Todor Zhivkov.

The illustration accompanied the following epigram, entitled "SILENT BUT STILL HEARD!": "You'll have a full gut, if you keep your mouth shut." With that added incentive, readers snapped the book up as quickly as it could be put on the shelves. This led to the first scathing review of the book. It appeared in an editorial written by David Elazar for the Communist Party's Central Committee, under the auspices of the Ministry of Agitation and Propaganda.

The jist of it was that "Hot Peppers" was a brazen literary aberration, and the publishing house Bulgarian Artist, and its director Boris Tashev in particular, had been "politically short-sighted and irresponsible," especially "at the very time when counter-revolutionary and revisionist sentiment was at its height in Czechoslovakia".

At party meetings across the country, the book was condemned as a political crime, an instrument for destroying political morale and discipline, a display of blatant disrespect for law and order, the Communist Party leadership, and a distorted picture of the socialist economy.

The Communist Party Central Committee decided to punish anyone who had anything to do with the publication of "Hot Peppers". The illustrator Dimovski lost his job at Sturshel (Hornet) newspaper, and so did the director of the publishing house Tashev.

A campaign against this "dangerous" book was carried out throughout the country. The second batch of 20 000 copies that had not yet reached the market were confiscated from the publisher and burned in the furnace of Sofia's Publishing House.

Legend has it that students of a neighbouring school found half-burnt pages of the book and gathered them up, and in the days that followed they copied the illustrations that had survived the flames and distributed them widely. Meanwhile, the price of "Hot Peppers" skyrocketed on the black market.

Ralin became synonymous with political wit, and attribution reached such proportions that he was reportedly provoked to write an epigram on the subject: "My folk, write on your lore, but credit not Radoi for this galore!"

Ralin also wrote aphorisms, satirical parables, serious verse, scripts for stage performances, film comedies and documentaries, and translated Pushkin, Goethe and Moliere. His own works have been translated in 37 languages.

Ralin was among the founders of the opposition movement that finally ousted communist rule in 1989. In January 1989, he was one of 12 most prominent dissidents invited by visiting French President Francois Mitterrand to a breakfast at the French Embassy in Sofia. Ralin was urged to run for Parliament in the first and then in the second general elections after 1989, but he adamantly refused. He has been quoted saying that where politics starts, art ends.

Radoi Ralin declined any awards and privileges offered to him in the post-communist years. His belief was that art is created in absolute poverty. He saw himself as a mouthpiece of the destitute, and in recent years took up the cause of what he saw was an army of wronged Bulgarian pensioners.

His gaunt, bearded figure was a familiar fixture in central Sofia, riding on public transport, talking loud casually to total strangers or to himself.

"Hot Peppers" epigrams, translated by David Jenkins:

"Loyalty" - "One for all! All for one! You pour the wine, I'll drink it down."

"Self-preservation" - "I was a banner, the flag of a warrior. I flew proudly in battle, but one evening was lowered. At first my fate was uncertain. I was faced with the scrap heap, so now I'm a curtain."

"My Poetic Creed" - "As soon as the poet pleases the mob, he stops doing his job."

"A Surprising Development" - "It seems the world may still be flat! The child, who so boldly arose, to declare the emperor wore no clothes, is now the emperor's diplomat!"