Contemporary Authors

Lidija Dimkovska is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2013 European Union Prize for Literature for A Spare Life. She is also the author of the poetry collection pH Neutral History (Copper Canyon Press, 2012), which was a finalist for the 2013 Best Translated Book Award, and Do Not Awaken Them With Hammers (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2006). She lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Lidija Dimkovska
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Portrait of Lidija Dimkovska

Lidija Dimkovska (born 1971) is a Macedonian poet, novelist and translator. She was born in Skopje and studied comparative literature at the University of Skopje. She proceeded to obtain a PhD in Romanian literature at the University of Bucharest. She has taught at the University of Bucharest and the University of Nova Gorica in Slovenia. She now lives in Ljubljana, working as a freelance writer and translator of Romanian and Slovenian literature.[1]

Dimkovska is an editor at Blesok, the online Macedonian literary journal. She has won a number of literary prizes including:

the Hubert Burda literary prize for young East European poets (2009)
the Tudor Arghezi international poetry prize in Romania (2012)
the Macedonian Writers' Union award (twice)
the EU Prize for Literature (2013)

Her first book was the novel Skriena Kamera (Hidden Camera, 2004). It won the Macedonian Writers' Union award. It was also shortlisted for the Utrinski Vesnik award for the best novel of the year. Skriena Kamera has been translated into Slovenian, Slovakian, Polish and Bulgarian. Another novel Backup Life also won the Macedonian Writers' Union award, as well as the EU Prize for Literature.

Her book of poems pH Neutral History was translated into English by Ljubica Arsovska and Peggy Reid. It was nominated for the Best Translated Book Award from the online literary journal Three Percent.[2]

Winning Authors
Lidija Dimkovska, The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
About the author:

Lidija Dimkovska was born in 1971 in Skopje, Macedonia. She is a poet, novelist, essayist, and translator. She studied Comparative Literature at the University of Skopje and took a PhD in Romanian Literature at the University of Bucharest, Romania. She has worked as a lecturer of Macedonian language and literature at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Bucharest, and as a lecturer of World Literature at the University of Nova Gorica, Slovenia. Since 2001 she has been living in Ljubljana, Slovenia, as a freelance writer and translator of Romanian and Slovenian literature into Macedonian. She has participated at numerous international literary festivals and was a writer-in-residence in Iowa, Berlin, Graz, Vienna, Salzburg, and London.In 2009, she received the Hubert Burda literary prize for young East European poets and, in 2012, she won the Tudor Arghezi international poetry prize in Romania. She is a member of the jury for the Vilenica international literary award in Slovenia, and the Zbigniew Herbert international award for poetry.

Her first book Skriena Kamera (Hidden Camera) was published in 2004, winning the Writers’ Union of Macedonia award for the best prose book of the year. It was also shortlisted for the Utrinski Vesnik award for the best novel of the year. It has been translated into Slovenian, Slovakian, Polish and Bulgarian.

Backup Life received the Writers’ Union of Macedonia award for the best prose book of the year and was also shortlisted for the Utrinski Vesnik award for the best novel of the year.
Publishing house:

ILI-ILI
ul. Vasil Glavinov 3
1000 Skopje, former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

Contact person: Igor Angelkov - e-mail: iliili@mail.com
Translation deals:

Bulgaria: Kolibri
Czech Republic: Vetrne mlyny
Croatia: Ljevak
Hungary: Napkút Kiadó Kft
Italy: Atmosphere Libri
Latvia: Mansards
Slovenia: Modrijan
Serbia: Agora
USA: Two Lines Press

Lidija Dimkovska

Poet, novelist, and translator Lidija Dimkovska was born in 1971 in Skopje, Macedonia. In her native language she has published five books of poetry, one novel, and edited an anthology of young Macedonian poets. In 2006 Ugly Duckling Presse published her first poetry collection in English, Do Not Awaken Them with Hammers. She is the recipient of numerous literary awards, including the Studentski zbor Prize for best debut book for Progenies of the East (1992) and the best debut novel award for Hidden Camera (2004) awarded by the Writers’ Union of Macedonia. Her work has been translated into more than 20 languages. Dimkovska now lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where she teaches at a university and translated Romanian and Slovenian literature into Macedonian.

QUOTED: The allegory between the conjoined heads of Zlata and Srebra (their names mean ‘gold’ and ‘silver’) and the breakup of the former Yugoslavia was not my initial idea when I began writing the novel, but during the writing process many allusions and connections between them spontaneously appeared.
My novel begins in 1984 and ends in 2012, so it encompasses almost thirty years of personal saga between the sisters and their family, but also a historical time: changes in the political system from socialism to capitalism and the war in ex-Yugoslavia.
In my life, poetry and prose are two doors leading to the same home. For a long time I thought I could only write poetry, but when I discovered the urge to tell a story, to create characters, I fell in love with writing prose. There are times when I write more prose or more poetry. Sometimes poetry and prose ‘fight’ in me, each asking for their own time, own space. But to give birth to words is, to me, the most beautiful thing

Interview with Lidija Dimkovska

I met Lidija Dimkovska at the Twin Cities Book Festival in October, fleetingly, and completely by accident. I had been staying at a writing residency outside of Red Wing, Minnesota, and after a few weeks of being confined to the work centre, cabin fever set in and I tagged along to the cities with one of the other residents who had a car and a lunch date. I circled the fairgrounds aimlessly for a long time, content and a bit overwhelmed to be among so many books and their people, a stark contrast to having been holed up in my rural accommodations. Finally, looping again to the front of the exposition, one of the name tags on a table caught my eye — Dimkovska’s — and I let out an excited yelp that frightened the woman at the information desk. Dimkovska, who hails from Macedonia (an ex-Yugoslav republic) is an esteemed writer across Europe, the author of several novels and volumes of poetry, and winner of the EU Prize for Literature in 2013. I had just read and loved (and blurbed) her first novel translated into English — A Spare Life, about twin sisters conjoined at the head who serve in part as an allegory for the ex-Yugoslav republics and the bloody separations that came to pass in the civil war. The novel had stuck with me, the weight of it — dense with the minute detail of the twins’ lives, while at the same time encompassing a broader Balkan history with the expansive feeling of myth, or elegy. I watched as she read from her book in English, then spoke passionately about how one could not be alive and apolitical, a reminder particularly prescient given what would happen weeks later as the election results rolled in. I waited for her at the signing table to introduce myself, and Dimkovska, recognising my name, stood and cupped my face in her hands — ‘Sara!’ she exclaimed, and though I was far away from everyone and everything I knew, the trill of her ‘r’ and the light in her eyes made the Minnesota State Fairgrounds feel, for a moment, quite a bit like home. The following interview was conducted by email, after the conclusion of Dimkovska’s book tour in the States.

—S. N.

QTHE WHITE REVIEW — You’ve spoken about how A Spare Life is an allegory for the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. Could you elaborate on that?

ALIDIJA DIMKOVSKA — In A Spare Life, the protagonists are Macedonian twins with conjoined heads, Srebra and Zlata. They were born in the 1970s, the generation I belong to, and my novel is primarily dedicated to this generation. They grow up in Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, which was, at that time, one of the republics of ex-Yugoslavia. Their life is complicated for many reasons: physically (they have to do everything together, no single movement is an independent one), psychologically (almost nobody wants to be with them or loves them, even their parents, who are working-class and ashamed to have daughters with conjoined heads). At the age of 24, they go to London to be surgically separated, and during the operation one of them dies. They are aware that the operation is almost impossible and that one or both of them will be the victim of their own desire, but they agree to that because they don’t see any other solution for their lives.

At the same time, in Yugoslavia, the desire for Serbian domination over the other republics grows, alongside the desire of Slovenia, and after that Croatia, to separate from Yugoslavia. The war began in 1991, first in Slovenia, then Croatia, and then – for the longest time – in Bosnia. Was such a separation possible without someone becoming the victim? In my novel, the tragedy of the separation is not the concept; it is in the most brutal and primitive application, just as it happened with a nonsense war that destroyed lives, people, places, humanity. The allegory between the conjoined heads of Zlata and Srebra (their names mean ‘gold’ and ‘silver’) and the breakup of the former Yugoslavia was not my initial idea when I began writing the novel, but during the writing process many allusions and connections between them spontaneously appeared.
QTHE WHITE REVIEW — So what gave you the idea to use conjoined twins as your protagonists? Were you thinking about the sisters first, or were you always seeking a symbol for your larger message? Why did you choose to tell the story from only one of the sisters’ perspectives?

ALIDIJA DIMKOVSKA — I got the idea from a documentary about two real sisters from Iran, who had conjoined heads and decided to separate from each other at a mature age, publicly, in a television documentary. They both died. I was shocked by their life before the operation, and their death, because they were full of optimism and hope, but of course aware that the end of the story probably would not be a happy one. For many years I carried their story in my mind, and one day I decided to write a story with similar characters, but within a context that is known to me: Macedonia and Yugoslavia.

Later, during the writing process, the twins Zlata and Srebra became symbols for many things, chiefly my generation: those born in the 70s who never believed they would have to experience war. My novel begins in 1984 and ends in 2012, so it encompasses almost thirty years of personal saga between the sisters and their family, but also a historical time: changes in the political system from socialism to capitalism and the war in ex-Yugoslavia. When I’m writing I always choose a character to tell the story when I am sure that only he or she can tell it authentically. Usually the main character is a witness to everything, so it was natural to choose Zlata, the twin who survived, to tell us the story of her and her sister’s life. And certainly, as a writer I have always been interested in unusual, strange or uncommon characters who are different from others.
QTHE WHITE REVIEW — How do you balance clarity of message with driving the narrative forward on a plot and character level?

ALIDIJA DIMKOVSKA — I tried to enter the skin of the narrator, Zlata, and to follow her voice, her rhythm, her mind, her heart. At the beginning, it was difficult for me to locate her and her sister’s bodies in space because of their conjoined heads, so I drew them to be sure that I would not make mistakes describing their positions. I researched conjoined twins and tried to put myself in their position: how they live in everyday life, for example, how they sleep, go to the toilet, sit, eat. It is extremely difficult to imagine what two bodies so close to each other do in these situations.

After that I tried to understand them psychologically, especially because they have very different personalities. For me, Zlata, the narrator, was closer to my own attitudes and thoughts, so it was not so difficult to write from her position, but similarly I needed to understand and authentically present Srebra. I gave the narrator all the freedom to express herself. It was very interesting experience; I felt myself caught in Zlata’s voice, and in a way, I felt that I belonged to her and to the story, and not they to me.

I wanted to tell a big, long story about a possible life in a very concrete time (1984-2012) and two very concrete spaces (Skopje, London). I am not sure that I tried to keep a balance between the plot and the characters in the novel; on the contrary, I followed the narrator to the end of my writing skills and also to the end of my human perspective. I think that in this novel I broached a somewhat radical place in writing, the point where life and literature make eye contact.
QTHE WHITE REVIEW — I can’t help but see parallels between pre-civil war Yugoslavia and the current political climate in the United States. Do you feel similarly?

ALIDIJA DIMKOVSKA — While travelling through the US on a tour, presenting my novel in ten different bookstores in different cities — even though I personally only met people who said they would never support Trump — in the air, in the masses of people and their spirit, I felt that he would win. It’s not easy to explain why — as I said, no one said that they liked him and I believe them. But travelling around, feeling the atmosphere in the cities, seeing from the outside how people live, how they are more and more alienated from each other, how the system of fear functions, all these platforms advertising certain lifestyles and desires; all of this is in line with the way Trump presents himself. When I was there in 2006, I couldn’t feel the segregation between black and white people. But this time, just looking at the unemployed sitting in central Baltimore filled me with the sentiment that the American Dream has, for some people, transformed into a nightmare.

The anguish that caught ex-Yugoslavia at the beginning of the 1990s was like the anguish in America before and after the presidential debates, and it exploded after the election in mass dissatisfaction, disappointment, and protests. Still, I don’t think that the ex-Yugoslav and the American destiny are very similar, I can only speak about feelings and fears, not about real conclusions. What happened in America can happen everywhere. When I was reading in Oakland, I got a big piece of cardboard from a local exhibition with the inscription: ‘If you want to make Trump sad, vote.’ I wanted to take it with me back to Europe but it didn’t fit in my suitcase.

The same message applies to politicians in Europe. In my fatherland Macedonia you could write: ‘If you want to make Nikola Gruevski sad, vote.’ And this message can quickly transform into its opposite. The politics in many European countries are rapidly worsening in a similar context to these new American politics. Trump proposed a wall between Mexico and the States, but the Slovenian (left) government has already placed barbed wire between Slovenia and Croatia to prevent refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, from entering.

Of course, there is an important difference between any European country and the States: the political decisions of each European country can destroy that country, but American politics can destroy the world. In Europe, Nazism and fascism are returning, or maybe it’s more accurate to say that they never left. I hope that human rights, if they cannot be improved, will at least stay as they are in America, and not worsen.

QTHE WHITE REVIEW — Do you have any thoughts, advice, or reading recommendations for Americans reeling from the results of the election?

ALIDIJA DIMKOVSKA — In a situation of disappointment and fear, such as this, everyone should find their personal way of grieving. I always suggest that art is the best medicine for an illness of the mind and soul. In the Yugoslavian war, when Sarajevo was occupied by the Serbian military without a possibility for escape, artists made so much art and held many events, and that was also a way of fighting against evil and the occupation. So read books, watch good movies, listen to good music, and find comfort in art, because art is timeless.

QTHE WHITE REVIEW — In that vein, any advice for American writers? Or in a broader sense, what do you think a novelist or poet’s responsibility is in a time of political tumult?

ALIDIJA DIMKOVSKA — Every person is a not only a homo sapiens, but a homo politicus. You cannot close your eyes to the reality of the world. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you must sit at your desk and write poems or novels against Trump; you can write also from the perspective of the antagonist. If you feel justice and you are by nature and education a human being who loves and supports freedom, democracy, and human rights, it will be, in one way or another, obvious in your writing.

Maybe it is true that literature cannot change the world, globally, but it can stir the reader, and influence their own behaviour and understanding. From literature we learn empathy, but also freedom of thought and expression: how to understand the human being and the world we live in. As a homo politicus, of course, every writer can also engage himself in concrete social or political activism, but that is another kind of question.

QTHE WHITE REVIEW — What is the state of things in Macedonia right now? What are the current struggles, and what’s next for the country?

ALIDIJA DIMKOVSKA — For ten years, the Macedonian government has consisted of a coalition of a Macedonian right-wing party, VMRO DPMNE, and a party of Albanians who live in Macedonia. That’s ten years of criminal corruption, a kind of soft dictatorship that brought much of the media onto its side, and an architectural catastrophe in the capital city Skopje, amongst other problems. If you watched pro-government media in Macedonia you would have thought it was all milk and honey, but the truth is that half of the nation is jobless and young people have been continuously leaving the country. People who see what’s going on have made countless protests. The Colourful Revolution pulled people together for a common purpose (to change the government and to bring justice) in a way we haven’t seen since Macedonian independence in 1991: this was not just a protest against the dictatorial regime in Macedonia but also against all corruption in politics and society. That government never learned the rules of democracy, and it transformed the country into a kind of personal farm, or a feudal property. On December 11 2016 there was an election in Macedonia that ended with a near-tie between the former ruling party and the opposition, SDSM. The former Prime Minister and VMRO DPMNE party leader, Nikola Gruevski, missed his deadline to form a new government after failing to secure support from his former partner, the Democratic Union for Integration. Because of that Macedonia has been without a new government for almost two months. But finally the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) decided to give their signatures to opposite party SDSM to get the mandate to form a government, and I really hope that it will be formed in the first half of March and lead on a new beginning of democracy in Macedonia.

QTHE WHITE REVIEW — I saw you read from your work in English at the Twin Cities Book Festival. What is it like to read your own work in translation?

ALIDIJA DIMKOVSKA — I always prefer to read in my mother tongue, Macedonian, because I write in it and when I read my work aloud I feel the energy and the atmosphere in which I wrote the novel. On my tour in the States I only read my novel in English once, at the festival in Minneapolis. It was an interesting experience for me to hear myself in the language of my novel, to hear my characters in a foreign language so wonderfully translated by Christina E. Kramer. I enjoyed it, but still prefer to read in my mother tongue, as it’s a language almost never present at readings in the States.

QTHE WHITE REVIEW — What are the limits and drawbacks of working in prose versus poetry? How do you choose your mode for a given idea, and how does your writing process differ between forms?

ALIDIJA DIMKOVSKA — In my life, poetry and prose are two doors leading to the same home. For a long time I thought I could only write poetry, but when I discovered the urge to tell a story, to create characters, I fell in love with writing prose. There are times when I write more prose or more poetry. Sometimes poetry and prose ‘fight’ in me, each asking for their own time, own space. But to give birth to words is, to me, the most beautiful thing — when I write I am absolutely happy, regardless of subject. Once I began feeling the urge to write fiction, my happiness doubled.

Writing prose is psychological and physical work (my back always hurts me when I write prose). It demands time, externally and internally. Even if I write my novels in quite a short time, I always carry the story for years before I sit and write it down. With poetry it’s different: the poems, in a way, write themselves. I am not a kind of poet who says ‘I am going to write a book of poetry this year’. I just slowly write poems, and when I have enough for a book I concentrate myself on its structure. For me writing is like breathing — I write because I need it.
QTHE WHITE REVIEW — What’s next for you? What are you working on now?
ALIDIJA DIMKOVSKA — Shortly before my tour, I published my third novel in Macedonia and in a way I feel like I’m still living with it. The title of the novel is Non-Oui, or ‘No-Yes’. Or ‘Neda’, short for the name for Nedjeljka, a Croatian woman from Split who moved to Sicily in 1947 after marrying a former Italian soldier, and became a partisan in the Yugoslav battalion Garibaldi after the capitulation of Italy. It’s a novel about the Second World War, Croatia and Yugoslavia, and the life of a woman immigrant who lived in Sicily for many years behind closed doors because of a mafia regime. It’s about love, identity, language, about Split and Castelamare del Golfo, about the fascism that is returning to Europe (or never disappeared). It is a human drama of loneliness, of (not) belonging, love, politics, and about how Nedjeljka, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, forgets the Italian language. Speaking the Croatian language that only her granddaughter can understand, she once again becomes a foreigner. It is a novel about how people become ghosts in their own environments — but who will care for ghosts?

Now I’m thinking about a book for children, my first one, and it’s quite difficult to begin. At the same time, I’m researching for a new novel that exists so far only in thoughts and plans: I am going to write a story about lost people, lost places. How can we gain back what we have lost, if we can at all? And should we?

And about the poems—they write themselves when they feel it is time. My new poetry book In Black and White was published in Macedonia some months ago, and my translators have already translated it into English, so now I hope to find a proper home for it in the English-speaking world.

Besides writing, I translate Romanian and Slovenian literature — my next project is to translate ten poets from Slovenian contemporary poetry for a literary magazine in Macedonia.

*

This interview was selected for inclusion in the 2017 Translation Issue by Daniel Medin, a contributing editor of The White Review. He is Associate Director for the Center for Writers and Translators at the American University of Paris, and an editor for The Cahiers Series and Music & Literature.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR
Lidija Dimkovska is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2013 European Union Prize for Literature for A Spare Life. She is also the author of the poetry collection pH Neutral History (Copper Canyon Press, 2012), which was a finalist for the 2013 Best Translated Book Award, and Do Not Awaken Them With Hammers (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2006). She lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Sara Nović is a writing instructor at Columbia University and with Words After War. Her first novel, Girl at War, was longlisted for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2016. She is the fiction editor of Blunderbuss.

THIS ARTICLE IS AN ONLINE EXCLUSIVE FROM MARCH 2017.

Lidija Dimkovska was born on 11 of August 1971 in Skopje, Macedonia. She is a poet, novelist, essayist, and translator. She studied Comparative Literature at the University of Skopje and took Ph.D. degree in Romanian literature at University of Bucharest, Romania. She worked as lecturer of Macedonian language and literature at the Faculty of Foreign languages and literatures, University of Bucharest, Romania. Now she lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia as a freelance writer and translator of Romanian and Slovenian literature in Macedonian. Occasionally she teaches World Literature at the Faculty of Humanistic Sciences at the University of Nova Gorica.
Books of poetry: "The Offspring of the East" (1992, together with Boris Čavkoski, literary award for best debut book), "The Fire of Letters" (1994), "Bitten Nails" (1998), "Nobel vs. Nobel" (2001, available also on line, second issue 2002), "Meta-Hanging on Meta-Linden" (poetry collection translated in Romanian, Vinea, Bucharest, 2001, literary award at the international poetry festival "Poesis", Satu Mare, Romania), "Nobel vs. Nobel" (translated in Slovenian, Aleph, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2004), "Do Not Awaken Them with Hammers" (poetry collection translated in English, Ugly Duckling Press, New York, USA, 2006), "Ideal Weight" (selected poetry in Macedonian, 2008), "pH Neutral for Life and Death" (translated in Slovenian, Cankarjeva, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2012), "Decent Girl"(poetry collection translated in German, Edition Korrespondenzen, Vienna, Austria, shortlisted for the German literary prize "Brucke Berlin"), and "pH Neutral History" (poetry collection translated in English, Copper Canyon Press, USA, 2012). She has edited the anthology of young Macedonian poetry "20.young.m@c.poets.00".
She published her first novel "Hidden Camera" in 2004 and for it received the award of Writers’ Union of Macedonia for the best novel of the year. It has been translated in Slovenian (Cankarjeva, Ljubljana, 2006), Slovakian (Kalligram, Bratislava, 2007), Polish (PIW, Warszawa, 2010) and Bulgarian (Balkani, Sofia, 2010).
Her poems have been translated and published in more than 20 languages all around the world. She has participated at numerous international literary festivals and was a writer-in-residence in Iowa, Berlin, Graz, Krems, Vienna, Salzburg, and London. In 2009 she received the European literary prize "Hubert Burda" and in 2012 the International literary prize "Tudor Arghezi" in Romania. Her second novel "Spare Life" is forthcoming in 2012.

e-mail:
lidija.dimkovska@siol.net

Lidija Dimkovska was born in 1971 in Skopje, Macedonia. She attained a doctoral degree in Romanian poetry in Bucharest. She lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and translates Slovenian and Romanian literature in Macedonian. In her native language she has published five books of poetry, two novels, and edited an anthology of young Macedonian poets. In 200, Ugly Duckling Presse published her first collection of poetry in English, Do Not Awaken Them with Hammers, and in 2012 Copper Canyon Press published her second book of poetry translated in English, pH Neutral History. Her books have been translated into German, Polish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Slovenian, and Slovakian. She has participated in numerous international readings and residencies and received many literary awards, including the award for the best debut book of poetry, for the best prose book of the year, two Romanian poetry prize, and the European award for poetry.

QUOTED: Dimkovska explores these nightmarish burdens with sensitivity and beautifully articulated writing
Through these intersecting public and personal tragedies, A Spare Life poignantly reveals universal truths about the inability to ever become completely severed from the circumstances of your birth.

A Spare Life by Lidija Dimkovska
FICTION
Author:
Lidija Dimkovska
Translator:
Christina E. Kramer

The cover to A Spare Life by Lidija DimkovskaSan Francisco. Two Lines Press. 2016. 532 pages.

Zlata, a Siamese twin conjoined at the head to her sister, Srebra, is the unlikely protagonist of Macedonian writer Lidija Dimkovska’s remarkable novel A Spare Life. The girls’ names in Macedonian—“zlata” means gold and “srebra,” silver—ironically contradict the misfortune of their deformity. The twins grow up in the 1980s in a squalid Skopje apartment with parents who are ill-equipped emotionally and financially to meet the challenges of raising them. The girls’ mother is a caustic, miserly woman who never shows love, only resentment, toward her daughters; their father is withdrawn and emasculated by his domineering wife and the daily struggle of providing for his family while the country breaks apart. Neighbors encountering the twins cross themselves, brandish the evil eye, or spit over their left shoulders to ward off the evil and bad luck that afflicts the girls.

Dimkovska’s memorable depiction of the twins’ claustrophobic existence is riveting. The girls’ conjoined heads restrict nearly all of their physical movements—bending, stepping, or turning by one requires the other, instantaneously, to do the same. Even going to the bathroom is a shared project: one sits on a trashcan next to the toilet while the other empties herself. Dimkovska’s depiction of the girls’ dismal lives is leavened with wry humor, as when Zlata concludes that replicating Sylvia Plath’s suicide would be impossible because standard-size ovens offer too little space to stuff two heads.

The girls live with the awful reality that their joined bodies subjugate their separate, individual personalities, and the psychological consequences of this are enormous. Srebra enrolls in law school, forcing Zlata to become a law student as well. And when Srebra falls in love with Darko, Zlata is unable to absent herself from their every kiss and intimacy. Each girl is the other’s unwilling captor, and this fact erases nearly all sibling affection. The two cannot even argue properly because in order to make eye contact with one another they must be facing a mirror. Dimkovska explores these nightmarish burdens with sensitivity and beautifully articulated writing that shines in Christina Kramer’s translation.

The twins decide to undergo a high-risk separation surgery when they are twenty-four. The procedure’s uncertain outcome parallels the existential threat facing Macedonia from ethnic hatreds roiling it. Through these intersecting public and personal tragedies, A Spare Life poignantly reveals universal truths about the inability to ever become completely severed from the circumstances of your birth. (Editorial note: Read an interview from this issue with Dimkovska.)

Lori Feathers
Dallas, Texas

QUOTED: Dimkovska is a poet English-language readers would be poorer without.

pH Neutral History
Lidija Dimkovska, trans. from the Macedonian by Ljubica Arsovska and Peggy Reid. Copper Canyon (Consortium, dist.), $16 trade paper (88p) ISBN 978-1-55659-375-8

Dimkovska doesn’t ask the easy questions: “To dig out what is live in my writing/ do I have to bury those living in the world?” This 10th collection (though only the second to appear in English) grapples with a world at once delightfully surreal and painfully real, where religion is as absurd as the absurdities it attempts to explain (“Islam: If shit happens, it is the will of Allah./ ...Christianity: Love your shit as yourself”), and where, to counteract loss, the dead are welcome to haunt the living (“since my brother hanged himself with the telephone wire/ I can talk to him for hours on the phone”). Acidic in its wit and unsurprising in its subjects, this book uncovers meaning in meaninglessness and gravity in unbearable lightness: “I too, like my brother,/ have been splitting hairs since birth,/ revelation at any price, unmask the meaning./ And the souls of those who split hairs/ end up three ways: hanged with a telephone wire,/ in the body of a poet, or both.” Dimkovska is a poet English-language readers would be poorer without. (June)
Reviewed on: 05/21/2012
Release date: 09/01/2012
Ebook - 120 pages - 978-1-61932-029-1

QUOTED: kaleidoscopic, bighearted novel,

A Spare Life
Lidija Dimkovska, trans. from the Macedonian by Christina E. Kramer. Two Lines Press (PGW, dist.), $14.95 (532p) ISBN 978-1-931883-55-9

In poet and writer Dimkovska’s (pH Neutral History) kaleidoscopic, bighearted novel, Zlata and Srebra, twins conjoined at the head, grow up in communist Skopje, Yugoslavia, in the mid-1980s, a period of great personal turmoil for the girls, set against the backdrop of civil unrest and the arrival of democracy and capitalism. Living in a comfortable if unadorned and “radically pessimistic” household with a melancholic mother who “focused on her death, not on her life,” the girls suffer the predictable jibes of their classmates and neighbors, create lasting friendships, excel academically, undergo sexual awakening, deal with the vagaries of extended families, and wish nothing more than to be freed one day of their physical bond to one another. Zlata, the more bookish of the two, narrates for the both of them. The plodding first half is populated by dozens of characters, shadows who brush past Zlata and Srebra, leaving relentlessly negative impressions on the twins. In those sections, the author contextualizes their lives more than necessary—though those stories anchor the characters deep in their Macedonian heritage and their faith, adding layers of richness and historical perspective as they move to London in the late 1990s for risky, life-changing surgery—ending with Srebra’s falling in love with Darko, the son of a wealthy architect and vice president in the opposition party. That and subsequent relationships drive the book’s action. Zlata, too, finds her soulmate, and through her persistence in the face of multiple tragedies she becomes the strong, willful, independent woman that her mother and her sister could never be. With the passage of her own twins into adolescence, she finally accepts the contentment that comes from appreciating life’s simple pleasures. “Let [the girls] at least eat cucumbers without bitterness,” Zlata muses in a late-night epiphany, “and when they grow up, may they drink only sweet coffee.” (Oct.)
Reviewed on: 08/15/2016
Release date: 10/01/2016
Open Ebook - 428 pages - 978-1-931883-57-3

A Spare Life

Reviewed by Natasha Gilmore
November 4, 2016

With its masterful writing and epic scope, it is certain to find its own footing as an enduring work of world literature.

Late in the novel A Spare Life, by Lidija Dimkovska, a character asserts that “every pain is both local and global,” an encapsulation for the grand scope of this powerful and intimate family saga set among the political strife of the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia.

Zlata and Srebra are sisters born conjoined at the head. Their names, “gold” and “silver,” are looked upon as a cruel joke for their fate, which draws ridicule in their 1980s Skopje suburb. The girls come of age amidst their own physical struggles, and their attachment, along with their attendant frustrations and hopes at separation, often parallel the political turmoil of the time.

When the sisters face a serious personal disagreement, the separation becomes a necessity, and they travel to London to undergo the operation, “so [they] could separate from each other—as if [they] were two former republics of Yugoslavia … by mutual agreement.”

The book’s power is not only in its metaphor, which is effected with a deft hand, but in its scope, which shows the power, subtlety, and difficulties of sustained intimacy for women over generations. The very physical connection the women have is a recurrent theme, as is the separation of head and heart: “That is how it is with people; their hearts are in their heads, and their heads in their hearts,” Zlata observes.

Dimkovksa’s writing is a revelation in economy. There is not a wasted word, not an erroneous character. The plot could border on the melodramatic but instead unfolds in a breathless saga of tragedy and depth that is rendered in beautiful, resilient, and spare prose.

Dimkovksa earned the European Union Prize for Literature, and her last work to be translated into English was nominated for a Best Translated Book Award in 2013. A Spare Life is a rare work of insight—both political and personal—and with its masterful writing and epic scope, it is certain to find its own footing as an enduring work of world literature.

QUOTED: Whether it comes to the tragic-ironic treatment of the dead (“National Soul”) or some kind of estrangement of the collective experience that always relies on folklore and myth (“Ballad on Aunt Else Refugees”), there is a provocative tension between life and death, memories and fictive representations of reality.

pH Neutral History by Lidija Dimkovska
VERSE
Author:
Lidija Dimkovska
Translator:
Ljubica Arsovska and Peggy Reid

Ljubica Arsovska & Peggy Reid, tr. Port Townsend, Washington. Copper Canyon. 2012. ISBN 9781556593758

pH Neutral HistoryThe latest selection of poetry in English of the prominent Macedonian poet Lidija Dimkovska (b. 1971) points out the ironic-parodic optics with the title itself, which undermines dominant topoi, stereotypes, and ideological patterns that constitute human experience and the role of women in modern civilization as well as the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Hence the collection pH Neutral History also refers to the historical process marked by fairy tales and fantastic elements, harmless to humans. Its “neutrality,” on the one hand, implicates a radical synergy of everyday snippets of private and public life, seeking some sort of ongoing reconstruction of the myth. On the other hand, in three cycles written in long, almost prose-dialogue verse named “Poems about Life and Death,” “Recognition,” and “Ballads about Life and Death,” a lyrical voice deconstructs this image by introducing a number of parallel realities in the poetic discourse. In this way it is semantically directed toward the oneiric border where the living and the dead remain together, in a form marked by constant pain. What they have in common is their perpetual status as refugees, who circulate freely from the world of the living to the world of the dead and vice versa.

Whether it comes to the tragic-ironic treatment of the dead (“National Soul”) or some kind of estrangement of the collective experience that always relies on folklore and myth (“Ballad on Aunt Else Refugees”), there is a provocative tension between life and death, memories and fictive representations of reality. Surreal, even dadaist devices distract the reader from focusing on the specific sequence of motifs. However, in most of the poems, the author manages to confront mythical-biblical, veristic-narrative, and lyrical-melancholic layers, integrating her own lyrical voice.

In the second cycle, “Recognition,” the poet’s own identity is questioned regarding her ancestors, her lover, and writing poetry. Her identity is defined as fluid, uncertain, “intertextual,” “extratextual,” at the place where joy and sadness are united: “I’d say you’re the key to a hermeneutic poem.” The explication of ars poetica thus can be treated as an interpretive effort of the human mind to veer off the road that leads to a “cannibalistic society.” It also alludes to the tempting of an existential personal experience, past and present, which affects the body of the text. Presence and absence are linked at the border of two domains: “But the world was slow when humanity was in question, / and fast when I stood at crossroads moving neither forward nor backward.” The poet alludes to an “earthquake epicenter” as a symbol of her grave, seen as a broken mirror, decaying and disappearing into dust or a gold frame. Evanescent, like life itself.

Bojana Stojanović Pantović
University of Novi Sad

BOOK REVIEW: ‘A Spare Life’ by Lidija Dimkovska
Books
Matthew LovittBy Matthew Lovitt Last updated Jul 26, 2016
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A Spare Life Cover
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Have you ever dreamed of having a twin? What about a twin that was attached to your head while growing up in communist Yugoslavia? Dream no more, my friend! A Spare Life by Lidija Dimkovska is the emotional tale of Zlata and Srebra, twins conjoined at the head, struggling to find meaning and identity in the face overwhelming poverty, political instability, and an emotionally uncertainty. Heavy stuff, no doubt, A Spare Life presents a reality that is almost more terrifying than that in which we currently live.

Set in late 20th century Yugoslavia, Zlata and Srebra, twins conjoined just above the temple, live a solitary life. Different in every respect save their clothing and the ridicule they receive from their family and community, our young twins struggle to find a shared direction for their live. In fact, they don’t, but necessity forces acquiescence by one or the other, which only serves to heighten the conflict between two completely different identities.

Yes, they have a couple friends to soften the blow, but one dies and the other moves away and the girls are left alone to confront a mother that oscillates between depression and severe depression, social support system riddled with absenteeism and death, and a nation on the brink of collapse. They make it to university where one finds faith and the other love when they suddenly find themselves in a position to receive the operation they need to gain independence, hopefully acceptance. They proceed at great risk and pay handsomely for the life they so desire, but the perspective the experience engenders pays out when they find peace in the life they fought so hard to escape.

Lidija Dimkovska, born in raised in Skopje, Macadonia, Home of Zlata and Srebra, does a wonderful job capturing the angst, tragedy, and terror of adolescence against a zeitgeist of social, cultural, and political upheaval. The girl’s awareness starts simply,

“At such moments, she hated me more than anything in the world. I hated her too because I felt she hated me.”

But, it evolves with the oscillation of emotion and time to inspire a level of awareness that I couldn’t fathom well into my thirties.

“Collective tragedies and the tragedies of the collective, no matter how intense, cannot surpass individual tragedy.”

Finally maturing into a world-view that is both dire and inspired.

“[We]…had been separated so that we would no longer be ‘invalids’, so that we would no longer have a ‘physical defect’, but now, with my body alone in the universe…I was truly an invalid.”

There are couple minor annoyances, descriptive phrases repeated verbatim throughout the text, but those instances are insignificant against the weight of Lidija Dimkovska’s words. Oh, and free up a few weeks because. Weighing in at a hefty 500+ pages, A Spare Life does require a good deal of attention. No matter, it’s complexity and precision make avoiding the tragedy of my middle-class, industrialised life enjoyable.

Verdict - 7/10

Review: 'A Spare Life'
Conjoined twins novel highlights notion of connectedness

By By Rob Cline, correspondent
Oct 9, 2016 at 12:05 am | Print View

“A Spare Life” is the story of two sisters — twins conjoined at the temple — growing up in Macedonia as Yugoslavia falls apart. As Zlata and Srebra imagine a life as separate individuals, their homeland is separating from its neighboring regions as war rages.

Macedonian author Lidija Dimkovska, who is a former resident of the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program, was awarded the 2013 European Union Prize for Literature for “A Spare Life.” Christina Kramer, a professor of Slavic and Balkan languages and linguistics at the University of Toronto, has translated the book into English.

The book is narrated by Zlata, who longs for a spiritual life and loves literature. Srebra is agnostic at best and is interested in current events and the law as she seeks to understand the future of her country. Their joint life is one of conflict and compromise as well as loss and hope.

The book is both long and dense, developing slowly so that the reader is taken deep into the day-to-day experience of the twins. Zlata is forthcoming about her feelings, doubts, and hopes; Srebra, on the other hand, remains something of a mystery because we are not privy to her thoughts.

As the girls come of age, matters of sex and love come to the forefront, as does the opportunity for Zlata and Srebra to be separate. The final portions of the book are driven by what they decide and the results of that decision.

Throughout the book, the notions of separateness and connectedness — for individuals and for countries — are highlighted. “A Spare Life” is a meditation on the challenges of moving forward together and apart.