Tzvetan Todorov

Tzvetan Todorov (bg: Цветан Тодоров) (born 1939 in Sofia) is a Bulgarian philosopher. He has lived in France since 1963 writing books and essays about literary theory, thought history and cultural analysis.

Todorov has published a total of 21 books, including The Poetics of Prose (1971), Introduction to Poetics (1981), The Conquest of America (1982), Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle (1984), Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps (1991), On Human Diversity (1993), Hope and Memory (2000). Todorov's historical interests have focused on such crucial issues as the conquest of The Americas and the Nazi and Stalinist concentration camps.

Todorov has been a visiting professor at several universities, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia and the University of California, Berkeley.

His honors have included the Bronze Medal of the CNRS, the Charles Lévêque Prize of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques and the first Maugean Prize of the Académie Française; he also is an Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.