SOFIA, Bulgaria — Valeri Petrov, Bulgaria’s most prominent contemporary poet and a former Nobel Prize nominee who translated the complete works of Shakespeare, has died at age 94.
Petrov’s family said he died Wednesday in a Sofia hospital following a stroke.
Valeri Nissim Mevorah, better known by his pen-name, Valeri Petrov, was born on April 22, 1920 in Sofia to a Jewish father and Bulgarian mother.
Besides poems, novels and translations from Russian, Italian and English, Petrov authored numerous film scripts and plays — both for adults and children.
During World War II he took part in the resistance against the pro-Nazi regime and remained close to left-wing political thought through his life.
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In 1970, he clashed with the communist regime in Bulgaria after refusing to sign an official petition denouncing the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn. As a result, Petrov was not allowed to publish for years, so he turned to translating.
Funeral arrangements have not been announced.
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press
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