Under the Yoke

Bulgaria's national novel, set in the year of the April Uprising of 1876 against Ottoman rule, follows the escaped revolutionary Boycho Ognyanov as he returns to a small town in the Rose Valley below the Balkan Mountains and helps rouse it to a doomed rebellion. Vazov drew his town of Byala Cherkva from his own Sopot: the streets and houses of the town, the school and the monastery, the neighbouring town of Klisura burned in the rising, and the Sredna Gora mountains where the revolt is crushed.

Boycho Ognyanov

Byala Cherkva (Sopot)

Part 1

The escaped revolutionary Ivan Kralich, under the name Boycho Ognyanov, slips back into his home town and, after saving a girl from Turkish assailants, becomes the secret heart of its revolutionary circle. The ordinary streets and courtyards of the Rose Valley town are where a whole community is drawn, house by house, toward rebellion.

Part 1

inspired by The town of Byala Cherkva is drawn from Vazov's own birthplace of Sopot, in the Rose Valley below the Balkan range; sited at Sopot, the real town the novel fictionalises.

Google Maps ↗ Street View ↗

Rada

The school (Rada)

Part 1

At the school, the shy teacher Rada and the disguised Ognyanov fall in love, their tenderness set against the gathering storm. The tie between them, and the danger it runs as the conspiracy grows, gives the national drama its intimate, human centre.

Part 1

inferred Rada, the gentle orphan schoolteacher Ognyanov loves, teaches at the town's girls' school; the specific school is sited within the real town of Sopot.

Google Maps ↗ Street View ↗

Chorbadji Marko

Chorbadji Marko's house

Part 1

Marko, the cautious, decent patriarch, opens the book worrying over his children and ends it swept, like the whole town, into the cause he first mistrusted. Vazov uses his household to show a whole society, prudent and settled, gradually catching the fever of freedom.

Part 1

inferred The respected householder Chorbadji Marko presides over a large family in the town; his house, a fixture of the community, is sited in the real Sopot the novel maps.

Google Maps ↗ Street View ↗