Iliya
Troyanov

Iliya Troyanov (also known as Ilija Trojanow and Ilya Troyanov) was born in 1965 in Sofia. His family fled Bulgaria in 1971, arriving in Germany, where they received political asylum. They travelled to Kenya in1972, where his father had work. After a stay in Paris, he studied law and ethnology at Munich University. He founded two publishers specialising in African literature. He has since lived in Mumbai, Cape Town and Austria. He now lives in Vienna. He initially wrote books about travel as well as translating African literature into German but has since also written several novels.