This book is a result of patient research I started in the seventies, while I was preparing my PhD dissertation at the Higher Institute of Social Studies and the subject was the Bulgarian Revival and the West. It was my first encounter with Alexander Exarh – my as distant as mythologized great-grandfather. From then on my only ambition was the dethroning of this myth in order to understand what he had contributed to the success of building up the Bulgarian country and why he had become a representative of an authentic tradition of Bulgarian Revival.
Alexander Exarh (1810 – 1891) is a public figure of the Bulgarian National Revival – medical man, diplomat, politician, journalist, enlightener and fighter for church independence. After the Liberation he is one of the candidates for the Bulgarian throne.
Pierre Voillery (born in 1957) is a French historian and diplomat, a descendant of Alexander Exarch. He is the author of “Bulgarian Revival and the West: France and Bulgarians (1762-1856)”; Among Two Worlds: Bulgarians in Roumelia XVIII-XIX century”; “Identity and Nationality of Bulgarians within the Ottoman Empire. Alexander Exarch (1810-1891)” – a French edition, Istanbul, 2008; Acts of the Colloquium “Alexander Exarch and Bulgarian Ways to Europe” (in cooperation with D. Parusheva and G. Valchev) – a bilingual edition, Stara Zagora, 2007.
* The website www.colibri.bg is optimized 
