📅 ON THIS DAY IN BULGARIA, Friday 16 October
By Bulgarian Wikipedia's account she was the most popular woman writer in the country, and by 13 October 1944 she was in prison under the new communist regime. Both halves of that sentence belong to Fani Popova-Mutafova (Фани Попова-Мутафова, FAH-nee po-PO-va moo-TAH-fo-va), born on this day in 1902.
What happened on this day
She was born in Sevlievo, the daughter of General Dobri Popov and a niece of General Stefan Nerezov. Until she was 12 the family lived in Italy, where her father studied at the military academy in Turin. In 1922 she married the writer Chavdar Mutafov and went with him to Germany to study piano in Munich. Her first story appeared in 1924, and her biggest project was a four-part cycle, "Asenovtsi" (Асеновци, "the Asens"). Bulgarian Wikipedia counts more than 35 books by 1944, and the English entry says many consider her the best-selling Bulgarian historical novelist ever.
The war is where the story turns. The English entry says she helped found the Ratniks in 1936 and was counted among their main ideologists; English Wikipedia's page on the group calls it far-right and nationalist, with ideas close to the Nazis', antisemitism included. The entry adds that she joined the European Writers' League, which Joseph Goebbels founded in 1941 or 1942, and Bulgarian Wikipedia says her wartime journalism praised the victories of the Tripartite Pact. After the coup of 9 September 1944 she was expelled from the Writers' Union and tried by the People's Court, which sentenced her to seven years for "anti-Bolshevism", "pro-German activity" and "Greater Bulgarian chauvinism". She served 11 months and was pardoned because of severe asthma and her father's pleas. She was held again in 1950–1951, regarded as a danger to state security.
In the 1960s the regime softened, on terms: she had to repent of her "mistakes" before a corrected edition of "Kaloyan's Daughter" could appear in 1962, and she was forced to change two more novels. She died in Sofia on 9 July 1977, aged 74. The four-part "Asenovtsi" appeared with its authentic text, for the first time since the war, in 2007–2009.
Pravets and 16 October
Our calendar data pairs the date with Pravets (Правец, PRAH-vets), a town in Sofia Province, 60 km from the capital. Bulgarian Wikipedia lists 16 October as Pravets Day, the anniversary of the place being declared a city by decree on 16 October 1981, to mark the 1300th anniversary of the Bulgarian state. That makes today the 45th. I found no programme, so check the municipality before travelling. The town gave its name to the Pravetz computers of the 1980s, and computer production stopped after 1989. It is also the birthplace of Todor Zhivkov, party leader from 1954 to 1989, whose birth house featured on the first coat of arms. Today it has 3,527 residents (31 December 2025).
Why this matters for British expats
Her story is a reminder that books in Bulgaria have a political biography: a bestselling author jailed by the communist regime, then made to edit her work before that regime would reprint it. For English readers, the English entry lists a 2023 anthology, "Virginia's Sisters", with a piece called "A Woman" in Petya Pavlova's translation. The Pravets anniversary has a thread to Shumen too: 1300 years before 1981 is 681, the year English Wikipedia gives for the treaty recognising the Bulgar state, and the first capital, Pliska, is today a town in Shumen Province, 20 km northeast of the city.
Sources and further reading
The biography comes from the Bulgarian Wikipedia entry on Fani Popova-Mutafova and the English entry, with the Ratniks described on English Wikipedia's page on the organisation. The Pravets details come from its Bulgarian and English pages, and the Pliska detail from the English page on Pliska.