Clever Pejo, My Enemy

Clever Pejo, My Enemy Clever Peјo, My Enemy is a collection of 19 stories and one play, in which some of the great narratives both in Macedonian culture and beyond are reexamined, through the construction of a different perspective, as well as through irony and self-criticism. The first story represents the search for identity of a fictive character, a neighbor of the famous folk hero Itar Peyo (Clever Peyo), whose values and strives for justice are different from those of Clever Peyo, so that the famous stories of this traditional hero are told from a different perspective. Most of the other stories take place in contemporary times, constructing psychological portraits of those who gain power with the help of violence and populism, of those who fail to deal with them, of those who do not notice that they themselves do what they mostly criticize. Self-irony is often used in these stories, in which the characters are also narrators who occasionally, consciously or not, overreact and do not fully understand the circumstances in which they are. Some of the stories more openly discuss contemporary political and social issues. All narratives in Clever Pejo, My Enemythrough various literary techniques, attempt to undermine the traditionally dominant views and values.