It’s not everyone who is able to turn a childhood hobby into a life-long career. And then, while yet a young man, to turn this career into one that works for him and for others, and through it all, to still enjoy it.
Mihail Veshim is the Editor-in-Chief of the satirical weekly Bulgarian newspaper Sturshel (Стършел, meaning hornet). The paper was born in February 1946 as a sort of leftist publication for higher minds; the stork dropped Veshim in Sofia about 15 years later.
In between those two events, Bulgaria turned communist and soon took over the newspaper. Sturshel has been independent (again) since 1990, Veshim said, thus making it the oldest paper in the country to never have had its publication interrupted.
Throughout, it has maintained its humoristic view on life.
“I’ve always loved humour,” he said. “When I was a child I read Sturshel because it seemed different from other newspapers. I would copy down the jokes to improve my penmanship; later I started writing my own.”
In 1982, after graduating with a degree in journalism from Sofia University, he took his first job, and it was at Sturshel. “I’ve never worked elsewhere,” Veshim said.
But in fact, as much there is a sense of fraternity among newspaper colleagues around the world, the real reason that Veshim met with The Sofia Echo was to talk about his most recent book, The English Neighbour (Английският съсед/Angliiskiyat Sussed), published by Ciela. An English translation is not in the works.
Written in Bulgarian, for Bulgarians, from a Bulgarian point of view, the comedic novel portrays a somewhere-Bulgaria village, where the inhabitants do anything possible to make their lives as “Western” as they can: the village kruchma is named Bar London, one of the residents is a metal-head, another trades stocks online. They’ve even gone so far as to rename the village itself – to Nottingham Forest.
Then comes a real Englishman, who is more Bulgarian than the Bulgarians: he tills the land, he plants his own cottage garden, he undertakes household repairs and restoration... And the (original) locals all find him kind of unhinged.
“It’s more about Bulgarians than English people,” Veshim said. In between the sentences, there is a questioning of: what is the contemporary Bulgarian?
“We’re not bad people,” he said, a twinkle in his eye all the while, “but we kind of get distracted from where we’re ultimately going – we talk more than we work. ‘It’s always the others who are guilty, the politicians owe us,’ that type of thing. But it’s a jolly, happy, humorous book – it does not belittle Bulgarians. I wrote it to have fun with myself, not to analyse the modern Bulgarian.” Veshim compared it to something of a modern Bai Ganyo.
He himself has never really lived in a village, but does spend time at the family house in the Troyan region. “There we observe village life,” he said.
Though it was not there that the idea for the novel came to him. Four years ago, on holiday at Kamchiya, Varna region, there was an Englishman who ended up being the inspiration for The English Neighbour. What started as a feuilleton became a longer piece, then a radio play, then a television scenario (“I’m waiting for it to be put into production”), then, finally, the 194-page book that was officially presented on April 1 2008.
Despite the ever-increasing number of UK citizens living in Bulgaria, Veshim does not expect an Anglification of Bulgaria to take place, citing the great difference in mentality as one key reason. “The Bulgarians cannot understand the English system of nobility, with all their dukes and lords and such, and English cannot understand us because of these 45 years when Bulgaria could not develop like a normal country – that period was some other experiment,” he said.
“It would be good if foreigners learnt Bulgarian, so as to understand us better.”
Veshim comes from what he describes as a “writing family”; his father is Georgi Mishev, screenwriter for classic films like The Boy Turns Man (Момчето си отива/Momcheto si otiva) and Villa Zone (Вилна зона/Vilna zona). “But talent is not passed on – only money and illness can be inherited,” Veshim says, quipping again. “To distance myself, I also changed my name.”
Veshim is a palindrome of his family name. On his legal documents, though, along with the last name that carry his wife and two children – “my most humorous product yet” – is written Mishev.
Underneath the humour of Veshim, or maybe complementing it, for there is no way to poke fun at humanity without understanding it, is a sense of insight. This was particularly evident when he started recounting his voyage to China, Macau and North Korea in 1988. Sent on a business trip from Sturshel, the purpose was to provide material for future articles, observations of life in brother communist-socialist countries and such.
To arrive in North Korea, he and his colleague simply hopped on a boat from Beijing (then Peking) to Pyongyang – and the authorities had no real way to send them back. Not being part of a tourist group, their experience was in some ways limited, and in others, expanded. Tourist “delegations”, as they were called then, were only shown certain things and allowed in certain places.
“If you’re not part of a delegation, they don’t really know what to do,” he said.
“It was like Orwell’s 1984, but we saw it in 1988 in Pyongyang... Everyone should see North Korea, to see to what an absurd extreme a country can be driven,” Veshim said.
They were not allowed to write about North Korea.
Veshim’s favourite authors include Mark Twain, Chekhov, Jaroslav Hasek, Karel Capek and, of course, Woody Allen.
In 2008, Veshim, along with Vassil Sotirov, was awarded the national Raiko Alexiev prize for humour and satire for his overall literary contribution to the genre.
