Elin Pelin

Elin Pelin (8 July 1877 – 3 December 1949), born Dimitar Ivanov Stoyanov was a Bulgarian writer. Stoyan Christowe called him "Bulgaria's leading writer".

Biography He was born in the village of Bailovo, in Sofia District. He completed his primary education, but not his secondary education. He spent 1904–05 in France, and made trips to Italy and Russia in 1906 and 1913. In 1940, he was named president of the Union of Bulgarian Writers.

After the War, he managed to escape being blacklisted as a forbidden author by the Communist government of the People's Republic of Bulgaria. The regime chose to consider his works as those of a realistic, critical author, а precursor of Socialist Realism who, although not having correctly seized the true nature of the Bourgeois state, knew how to tell about the life of the working class and individual revolt of exploited peasants.

Earth and The Gerak Family, amongst other works, have been filmed several times (1930 and 1957, and 1958, respectively).

In 1949, he was presented with the gold medal for science and art. Georgi Karaslavov described him as second only to Botev in Bulgarian literature.