ASEN HRISTOFOROV – an economist and writer, born on December 16, 1910 in Plovdiv. He studied Economics in London, where he graduated in 1934. He was among the founders of the Statistics Institute. He was professor of Economics (1945-47). He wrote interesting memoirs from his studies in London (“Sketches from London”). After 1948 he also wrote a number of fiction books. He died in 1970.Asen G. Hristoforov was born in 1910 in Plovdiv, in an old house on the Sahat Tepe hill (i.e. the Clock Tower Hill). He studied at the Robert College in Constantinople and later became the first Bulgarian to graduate from the London Institute of Economy. He refused to pursue an academic carier in London, and came back home to found the Institute of Econometric and Statistics at the Sofia University and at the age of 35 he was a Professor of Financial and Administrative Sciences. In 1947, the communists had him fired from the university banning him from reading lectures to students for the rest of his life. He was also banned from living in the capital city of Sofia.Asen Hristoforov spent the years 1950-1052 at the Belene concentration camp.From 1952 till his death in 1970 he was living in the small village of Govedartsi.A brillian economist, Asen Hristoforov was also a writer and one of the best literary translators from English into Bulgarian. Bwing allowed by the communist authorities to work on his translations for living, he was the very first to translate James Joyce's "Dubliners" without even having dictionaries or reference books at hand. His translation of Jerome K. Jerome's works is considered the work of genius. Asen Hristoforov has also translated Jack London, Chalotte Bronte and Fileding in Bulgarian. He is also the author of a latge number of original books. His eesays on Plovdiv are among the most poetic pieces ever written about our city.