Conan in Bulgaria...Part 4!

Time to take the plunge into Bulgarian publisher Elf (Елф) and their Conan offerings!  From 2000-2003 Elf published a myriad of novels featuring either Conan or one of REH’s other well known protagonists.  Interesting stuff indeed, because it’s something you just don’t see every day. 









Hold the phone!  At first glance, it appears that Elf simply stole a page from the de Camp playbook, co-authoring stories with the late Robert E. Howard and others.  Word is that they took things to another level though, writing all original Conan stories in Bulgarian, then billing them as translations rather than original stories, borrowing names and pseudonyms from known Conan authors, and writing fake reviews in order to help bolster sales.

Plamen Mitrev (Пламен Митрев) is the founder of the publishing house Elf, and it's believed that he's the primary culprit here, that these stories were not co-authored, and that the authors listed are all in fact Mitrev (and possibly other unknown authors based on the sheer volume of published materials).

On the Leonard Carpenter front - It’s true that there's little to be learned about Carpenter on the interwebs, but based on the other obvious shenanigans related to Elf’s publications and the fact that their publishing information has been thoroughly discredited by Bulgarian Sci-Fi book cataloging website SFBG, it’s a safe bet that Leonard Carpenter is NOT Plamen Mitrev.

Then there's Paul Uinlou...Russian author Nick Perumov used that verysamepseudonym when he wrote his original Conan stories several years earlier, so as ridiculous as it sounds Mitrev appears to have borrowed another authors pseudonym and made it his own.

Continuing on then...






The cover on the left is Cormac Mac Art: The Rise of the Vikings, credited to authors Robert E. Howard and Peter J. Tailler.  On the right, simply The Rise of the Vikings with the same author credits and page count (so it’s most likely a reprint of the same novel).

The publishers annotation is odd to say the least, explaining that the stories within follow the lives and exploits of the likes of Kull the Conqueror, Conan the Barbarian, Cormac Mac Art, Bran Mak Morn, and others, then goes on to explain that you’ll be reading about King Arthur and his round table, Lancelot, Guinevere, and the like.

That's it for Conan novels, but Mitrev wasn't done with REH's good name quite yet…



Mitrev even took Roy Thomas’s REH inspired Red Sonja for a spin around the block on more than one occasion…


Left to right: Red Sonja and the Gates of Hell (2002), Red Sonja and the Town of Light (2003), Red Sonja and the Stealer of Souls (2003).  All billed as translations from some English author named Jason Sollberg (once again, not true).

Well Cromrades (see what I did there?), this post is officially signed, sealed and delivered.  The finale from Bulgaria coming soon by Crom!