The first Translation Award of the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation dedicated to the Bulgarian translator Krustan Dyankov went to Lyubomir Nikolov for his translation of Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner, published in Bulgarian by Obsidian Publisher.
In his speech during the Award Ceremony, Lyubomir Nikolov urged the necessity of support for young Bulgarian translators and their work. He thanked the translators Krustan Dyankov and Valery Petrov, his university mentors, as well as the publisher of the winning translation.

Lyubomir Nikolov, a Bulgarian writer and literary translator, was born on January 10, 1950 in Kazanluk.

He studied engineering for two years in Tula, in the former Soviet Union, and graduated in journalism from Sofia University in 1977. Since then he has worked for Channel 1 of the Bulgarian NTV, the Central Council of the Bulgarian Trade Unions and several newspapers and magazines. In 1991, he began his career as a freelance writer and translator. Since 1988, Nikolov has translated more than 70 books from English by authors, including J. R. R. Tolkien, Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King, John Grisham, Frank Herbert, John Updike, and Clifford Simak. For his translation of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, he received the Award of the Union of Bulgarian Translators (1991).
Nikolov is author of five science fiction novels:
The Generation Tribunal, 1978; The Mole, 1981; A Worm Under the Autumn Wind, 1986 (EUROCON’87 Award winner); Along the Wall, 1989 (SOCCON’89 Award winner); and The Tenth Righteous Man, 1999 (Readers’ Award for best SF novel of the years 1990-2000).

We congratulate Mr. Nikolov on his achievements!