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Nikolai Grozni

Nikolai Grozni, (born Nikolay Grozdinski in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1973) is a Bulgarian/American writer.

Background

Grozni grew up in Bulgaria under the Communist regime. He was educated from an early age, being gifted, to become a professional concert pianist. He practiced the piano for up to 12 hours a day and was trained by highly proficient teachers in a special music school in Sofia. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 Grozni applied to study Jazz in the US and left for the West. He studied jazz and composition at Berklee College of Music, Boston, until making a sudden decision to become a Buddhist monk. He left the college in 1995, learnt Tibetan and joined a monastery in India, where he trained to become a monk. These years in Dharamasala, India would become the inspiration for his published memoir: Turtle Feet. Grozni holds an MFA from Brown University in the US where he studied creative writing after returning from the East. He is married to the writer Danielle Trussoni and now lives in southern France with his family. Nikolai Grozni is also the author of three published novels in Bulgarian.

Writing.

‘Lives of Idle Men and Degenerate Mystics.’ (published in Bulgarian in 1999.)

‘Asleep In the Great Emptiness.’ (published in Bulgarian in 2000.)

‘Someone put a Spell on Existence.’ (published in Bulgarian in 2001.)

‘Turtle Feet’: a memoir written in English (published in the US by Riverhead in 2008,) was a NewYorkTimes Editor’s Choice.

‘Wunderkind’: a tragicomic work drawing from Grozni’s early training as a classical pianist. It tells of a young man escaping from the rigidity and limitations of the communist regime through his passion for music. The book is due for publication by Simon & Schuster in July 2011.

Grozni has also contributed a series of short stories about Bulgaria to The Guardian newspaper.