Contemporary writing from Macedonia

The most recent work in B O D Y’s Saturday European Fiction was “Scribbles” by Macedonian writer Rumena Bužarovska, while a month earlier there was a story by another Macedonian writer, Ivan Dodovski, who has another work forthcoming in the magazine.

Macedonia is a country of just over two million people but has its share of writers currently making their mark. The one who has currently gained the most attention in the English-speaking world is Goce Smilevski, whose novel Freud’s Sister was translated into English.

Rumena Bužarovska also happens to be the prose editor for Blesok, a bilingual English/Macedonian literary and cultural bimonthly magazine that is a great resource to get into not only Macedonian but writing from other Balkan countries, Turkey and even further afield (they have a story by Slovak writer Jana Beňová, whose writing I can’t find in English in an American or British magazine but in a Macedonian magazine – tell me that isn’t fucked up).

So to stick to Macedonian fiction writers, here’s a sampling of just some of work Blesok has on offer. Smilevski has some fiction in the magazine, “Twin Sisters” and an excerpt from A Conversation with Spinoza.

Some other interesting short stories are by writers Blaže Minevski, Gorjan Miloševski and Dragi Mihajlovski among many others.

Photo – Macedonia Rail Line by Mike Walsh/wikimedia commons