We’ve been thinking about our next experiment for a long time. And for a long time we were preparing it, including via „seducing“ supporters… Finally, we went through something that brought us unexpected excitements. As well as a hope that it might turn out that we had made not a one-off curious cultural gesture, but a first step on a long path – a path that other people would recognize as their own. Here’s how:

We invited students from 3 Sofia schools (so far only 3 and only from Sofia, as a pilot „phase“) to reflect „together with“ or „against“ what great minds and intellectuals have written in books published by us. Theodor Adorno, Javier Goma, Giorgio Agamben, Michel Foucault are among the names whose claims we asked those young people aged 14 to 19 to support or challenge.
And we received many responses-essays. As we read some of them, it was hard to believe how mature people we tend to call „still kids“ can be. And how they can break out of the daily routine and thrill…

This is how we reached the final of our students’ „essays on a book excerpt“ contest, whose slogan was the question „Why do I think this way?“.

But nothing would have happened – not just not so well, but not at all – if we hadn’t had the literally magnificent philosophy teachers from all three schools with us: Teodora Todorova from the 9th French Language School „Alphonse de Lamartine“, Krassimira Ivanova from the National High School of Science and Maths „Academician Lyubomir Chakalov“, Vassilen Vassilev from the 19th Secondary School „Elin Pelin“ (let us note the support and mediation of the former teachers in these schools Valentin Kalinov and Ilian Shehada). As well as Yuliya Yordanova-Pancheva, a lecturer in Book Publishing at the Faculty of Journalism, Sofia University, who brings a different type of energy and point of view in the events.

The three ladies and Vassilen were also members of the jury. They made detailed tables in which they added up the points of each essay – for an original idea, for a good argumentation of the thesis, for an interesting, unconventional expression… It was very, very difficult to determine the winners, so in the end we decided not only to award several prizes – except for the first and the biggest, of course, which remained the only one -, but also to award each participant with a book of their choice from our publications.
The final took place as a public event on 14 June 2023 in the Library of the Goethe-Institut Sofia, and only the minor age of most of the participants stopped us (purely legally) from live streaming the event on social media. We would have thrilled many! The lounge was filled with contestants and their friends, teachers,  excited relatives. Serious and hilarious, expected and unexpected, script and improvisation intertwined – and hidden here and there tears of excitement as we listened to the contest ‘champions’ reading their texts or excerpts from them in public.

What were the topics proposed for the essays? Based on short excerpts from the publisher’s books. Which directly relate to current, painful or joyfully challenging topics of our present. Here are some of them, without the accompanying book excerpts, of course: – What does it mean to be „special?“; – If you could see yourself in 70 years, what kind of person would you be? What kind of destiny would you have had?; – How do you imagine the changed future of sex and child-making, in which technology is now intervening?; – How do you imagine power? Is the world as a whole ruled from one place or from nowhere; – What is a vocation? Do you feel you have a „calling“?; – How do you choose your causes?; – Do you agree that what you define as „awesome“ and „disgusting“ is something of an inverse mirror of yourself?; – Who and what are we contemporary to? What does it even mean to be „modern?“; – What do you think about secrecy – in private and in public outbreaks; – How would your private life change alongside the advances in freely available for use „artificial intelligence“ that we now use under the name Chat GPT?

Among the names of the participants we would like to mention, in alphabetical order:

From the 9th FEG „Alphonse de Lamartine“: Victoria Taneva, Mia Vasseva, Nicole-Valeri Tosheva, Nia Zhivkova, Rumyana Varadinova, Yassen Terziev

From NPMG „Acad. L. Chakalov“: Veronika Chogolyanska, Viktor Yanev, Deniz Mehmedova, Janeta Dudina, Ivan Boyanov, Konstantin Dimitrov, Krum Kirov, Lyubomira Zlatareva

From the 19th School „Elin Pelin“: Alexandra Savcheva, Gabriela Sofiyska

Most of these high-school students had written superb essays, some of which would have stunned even B.A. graduates in philosophy, cultural studies, sociology, or psychology.

We publish here, in Bulgarian only, the essay of the winner of the grand prize in the competition, Janeta Dudina, a student of Krassimira Ivanova at the NPMG „Acad. Л. Chakalov“.

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We are grateful to our host, the Library of the Goethe-Institut Bulgarien, who are always welcoming to our experimental initiatives.

We are also grateful to the National Culture Fund, whose financial support made this event possible, within the framework of a project under their „One Year Grant 2022“ programme.