Yordan Radichkov (; 24 October 1929 – 21 January 2004) was a Bulgarian writer and playwright. Literary critics Adelina Angusheva and Galin Tihanov called him "arguably the most significant voice of Bulgarian literature in the last third of the 20th century". Some literary critics have referred to him as the Bulgarian Kafka or Gogol. Radichkov is widely known for his numerous short stories, novels and plays. He is also known for the screenplays of the Bulgarian film classics Torrid Noon (1966) directed by Zako Heskiya, The Tied Up Balloon (1967) and The Last Summer (1974). In 2000, Radichkov was decorated with the high government prize the Order of the Balkan Mountains. In 2007, a monument dedicated to him was officially opened at the garden of the former Royal Palace, nowadays National Art Gallery in Sofia city centre. Early life He was born as Yordan Dimitrov Radichkov on 24 October 1929 in a poor family in the village of Kalimanitza, Montana Province, Bulgaria. In 1947, he graduated from the high school in the town of Berkovitsa. Radichkov began his career in 1951 as Vratsa regional correspondent for the Narodna mladezh (National Youth) newspaper and editor (1952–1954) for the same paper. Between 1954 and 1960, he worked as editor for Vecherni Novini (Evening News) paper. Writing career Radichkov's literary career began as he started writing short stories for the Vecherni novini (Evening News) newspaper and his early collections caught the attention of readers and critics. In 1959, he published his first full-length book, Sarczeto bie za horata (The Heart Beats for the People), followed by Prosti rutse (Simple Hands, 1961) and Oburnato nebe (A Sky Turned Upside Down, 1962), all written in the socialist-realist official style. This romantic style was gradually replaced by a style of parody and the grotesque, with an increase in folkloristic elements, including folk fantasy and humor. Radichkov began parodying styles and reality: his works deprived objects of their natural dimensions and took them out of context; he combined disparate genres and transformed reality into a comic theater, defusing absurd aspects of life by means of laughter. A mixture of the fantastic and the real, Radichkov's works combined images of industrial civilisation with those of a remote mythical past, and were sometimes defined as a Balkan magic realism. His parodic style was initially met with animosity from the ruling Communist party (he was often accused of primitivism, escapism