Part of the Bulgarian parents, as soon as they hear the word "magic", declare "this book is not for my child", what would you say to such parents?

Well-written fairy tales, in which magic is a pure metaphor for aspects of life (the same with fairy-tale novels), are often taboo for parents. The fairy tales in which, in a fabulous (often magical) way, there is death, abandonment, orphanhood, lies, fear, violence, humiliation, messing with innocence... All things that most parents do not want to face, under any circumstances in children's literature. Why don't they want to? Because they get scared. Scary even at the thought that something terrible could happen to the child. And that's a vicious (yes, that's right) vicious circle. We are afraid to read to children about fear. We fear the childish reaction against our fear-filled world. But the child, like it or not, quickly learns that magic isn't real, but scary things are totally real.

So the important question is: How do our children understand that they can defeat the scary things in life? And here my (and not only my) answer is that the only known way for our children to understand that they can win in life is the principle of fantasy. There is no other working way. Chesterton said, “From birth a child knows that dragons exist. However, only the fairy tale is able to teach him that dragons can be defeated!”.

What are the trends in the fantasy genre at the moment, does this genre have a pure form? I've noticed that a lot of books that have nothing to do with fantasy are called that, what do you think is the reason for this?

There is a very simple formulation of what fantasy is: "Fantasy is that novel or story in which all the characters, devices, functions and archetypes of the folk-magical tale are used." Genre confusion is common (of course, a genre always has sub-genres, in this sense sub-genres of fantasy can be mixed). However, it is equally common to label books for adults as children's books, which is a much, much more harmful practice.

We live in a world where evil becomes the norm, in your books the thread of goodness is always perceivable, at what moments do you lose faith in goodness in people?

No, I'm not losing faith… I'm just sad sometimes, but I never lose that golden, magical thread of goodness that keeps me firmly believing in goodness. And I do not believe that evil has become the norm in itself. Evil exists only so that we can discern and balance the good in the world.”

You can read the entire interview in Bulgarian at: Literary Journal