Trojanow/Troyanov

And speaking of Ilija (pictured left; photo by Beowulf Sheehan), the Complete Review puzzles over Faber & Faber's decision to publish The Collector of Worlds, his novel about Richard Burton (excerpted in PEN America 8 as "Bwana Burton's Binoculars"), under the differently transliterated name of Iliya Troyanov:

Of course, Bulgarian is written in Cyrillic letters, and were one to transliterate his name from those into English one would do so differently than into German: the German w is the English v-sound, and a y is the obvious choice where the Germans use j. And, apparently seeking to get the pronunciation right, Faber is publishing The Collector of Worlds as by: Ilya Troyanov. Which does give English-speaking readers a better idea of how to pronounce his name.

The problem with this is that Ilya Troyanov is better-known as -- indeed, very well known as: Ilija Trojanow. Even in the English-speaking world.

Two of his books have even been published in English translation -- Mumbai To Mecca and Along the Ganges -- and they were published under the name: Ilija Trojanow.

I came across this alternate spelling when we were putting the magazine together, and it momentarily caught me short. Is this other version better? As the Complete Review blogger (M.A. Orthofer? Elizabeth Morier?) points out, Google could have provided some advice: "Ilya Troyanov" yields "about 30 results," and "Ilija Trojanow" "about 46,300."

But shortly after I noticed the problem, I noticed the way Ilija signed his always endearing emails (sent from Bombay, from Capetown-- probably one or two other places): "Ilija Trojanow." If it works for him...

(By the way, he's currently working on a novel that "re-imagines the Bulgarian gulag and the complex shape-shifting of 1989.")