First published:
2012
ISBN: 978-608-261-105-1
Pages: 203
Format:
Cover: Paperback
Language: Macedonian
Translations: Slovenian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Serbian, English, German, Croatian, Czech, Italian, Romanian, Albanian, Greek. Excerpts available in French and Portuguese.
Genre: Fiction, novel
Synopsis
Zlata and Srebra are twelve-year-old twins conjoined at the head. "A Spare Life" tells the story of their childhood, from their only friend Roze to their neighbor Bogdan, so poor that he one day must eat his pet rabbit. Treated as freaks and outcasts—even by their own family—the twins just want to be normal girls. But after an incident that almost destroys their bond as sisters, they fly to London, determined to be surgically separated. Will this be their liberation, or only more tightly ensnare them? The metaphor of their separation is also a metaphor of the separation of the Yugoslav republics.
Reviews
"A Spare life" belongs to the best novels written not only in Macedonia, but also in the entire former Yugoslavia in the 21st century. The storytelling mastery of the author leaves the reader breathless as the years unfold in front of us in which they rise and fall. the personal lives of the heroes are falling apart, as well as the country in which they used to live.
Nenad Šaponja
"A Spare Life" by the Macedonian author Lidija Dimkovska is my novel-discovery for this year. I will not hesitate to compare it with Tolstoy and his Anna Karenina - according to the standard of storytelling, according to the probing of the depths of the soul and according to the quiet humility before the tragedy before which we occasionally look down from the page and direct it somewhere out the window...
Margarita Boicheva
"A Spare Life" is a rare insightful work – both political and personal – and with its masterful writing and epic scope it is sure to establish itself as an enduring work in world literature.
Foreword Review
