site.btaWriter Vesselin Portarsky to Read His Christmas Stories at Magdeburg City Library

Author Vesselin Portarsky will read Christmas short stories from his new book at the Magdeburg City Library in Germany on December 14. The literary reading will take place under the title "This time we will not give ourselves anything", Borislav Petranov, director of the Bulgarian Cultural Institute in Berlin, told BTA.

The event starts at 5 pm local time, and admission is free.

Vesselin (Veso) Portarsky was born in 1973 in Sofia. He is a graduate of the 91st German Language School. He graduated with honours in economics in Berlin and Amsterdam. 

His first job led him to the commercial directorate of the publishing house "Burda" in Moscow. He then moved to live in the Swiss city of Zurich, and in 2013 returned to Berlin.  

In Germany, he won a competition for promising young authors, which gave him a chance to work with the Nobel Prize winner Herta Muller on his texts. 

Portarsky’s short stories have been published in two anthologies by the Swiss publisher Diogenes, along with stories by Paulo Coelho, Anton Chekhov, E. T. A. Hoffmann, and Washington Irving, as well as in the German magazine Der Spiegel. 

With his work, Vesselin Portarsky contributes enormously to the promotion of Bulgarian culture and art in the Federal Republic of Germany, and in May of 2021 he was awarded by the Bulgarian Ministry of Culture, the Bulgarian Cultural Institute in Berlin said.

The event is organized by the Magdeburg City Library, in cooperation with the Bulgarian Cultural Institute in Berlin and the Interkultur Project Fund of the Auslandsgesellschaft Sachsen-Anhalt.