Burgas publisher Znaci is releasing "The Stolen Child", a children's book by Irish Nobel laureate William Butler Yeats, in Bulgarian for the first time, the publisher's team said.
The book will be presented to the public on October 28 at the State Puppet Theatre in Burgas, at a gala evening for Znaci's 20th anniversary. The first copies arrived from the printer shortly before the anniversary.
Zhivka Ivanova translated the book, and writer and translator Christopher Buxton advised on the edition. The illustrations are by Erin Brown, who draws by hand using traditional techniques and adds the colour digitally.
The book is part of Znaci's series "Famous Authors Write for Children". The first title in the series is "Seahorse" by Hristo Fotev, written 40 years ago and first published in this series.
Yeats wrote the poem when he was 21. It first appeared in The Irish Monthly magazine in December 1886. It was later included in the 1888 collection "The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems" and in "Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry" in 1890.
The poem came out as an illustrated children's book in Ireland in 2025, published by The O'Brien Press Ltd.
Yeats's early work drew on the summers he spent with his grandparents in Sligo and on local legends of ghosts, spirits, ancient heroes and fairies. His verse is full of magic and mystery and shows his interest in the supernatural.
In October we reported that the third issue of the magazine "More" had published an unknown manuscript by Hristo Fotev with poems for children, found in the State Archives in Burgas. The book came out in the summer under the title "Seahorse".
Yeats is one of the great authors of the 19th and 20th centuries, and many regard him as Ireland's national poet. He was among the founders of the Irish Literary Theatre, later the Abbey Theatre. He was elected a senator in 1922 and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923.