Author. He was an author and a Bulgarian dissident who became the victim of the so-called Umbrella Murder. An author and a playwright, he satirized the Communist high life, and in 1969, he defected from Bulgaria to England, where he began working for the BBC World Service in London. On September 7, 1978, while waiting at a bus stop, he felt a sharp jab in his thigh and saw a man picking up an umbrella. Over the next three days, he developed a high temperature and died three days after the attack. A post-mortem examination established that he had been killed by a tiny pellet containing 0.2 milligrams of ricin, a poison found naturally in castor beans. Despite the collaboration of British and Bulgarian authorities and Interpol, Markov's assassin has never been caught. He was the subject of two failed assassination attempts before he was finally killed. Many believe that he was murdered by either the Bulgarian Secret Police or the Russian KGB. After the fall of the USSR, it was learned that both were involved. Much of his works have been translated into English. Although some of his writings were censored by the Communists in his homeland, the story collections "A Portrait of My Double" in 1966 and "The Women of Warsaw" in 1968 secured his place as one of the most talented young writers in Bulgaria, His novel "The Roof" was censored after it had gone to the publisher to be printed. He was one of the writers of the television "Every Kilometer." His first published piece, "The Whiskey Record Holder," was revisited at least three times. His plays that were staged in Great Britain were "To Crawl Under the Rainbow" and " Archangel Michael," which placed first in a competition. His novel "The Right Honourable Chimpanzee" was published posthumously. His stance of anti-Communism in his writings was the reason he was killed. He was married and had a four-year-old daughter at the time of his death.