First published:
2018
ISBN:978-608-261-002-3
Pages: 142
Format:
Cover: Paperback
Language: Macedonian
Translations: Serbian and Bulgarian
Genre: Fiction, novel
Synopsis
Rainer Kesting, a German chess player and one of the strongest grandmasters in the world, is living in a childless marriage with his wife Hermione and is completely dedicated to his game. One night, he is visited by an unknown man from Macedonia, Kiril Manilov, who delivers him bizarre and startling news: Rainer had a biological son who he never knew existed and who recently died at the age of 34 in Skopje. The first and last time Rainer visited Skopje was as a participant of the East German team at the Chess Olympiad in 1972. Back then, he met Anamaria, with whom he started a short romantic relationship. Now, thirty-four years later, confronted with the new and shocking discovery, Rainer has to decide if he should fly to Skopje again and learn more about the past of his unknown son, as well as his own – fully aware that this would mean he would have to sacrifice his preparations for the upcoming chess tournament.
Excerpts:
https://www.literaturfuerdenfall.at/ein-trost-fuer-die-nackten/ (translation in german)
Reviews
With his established style and excellent syntax, Davor Stojanovski writes an intriguing story (...) Solace for the Naked is a dark and bizarre story too, but it never loses its humanistic undertone amidst modern-day chaos.
Dushko Krstevski
Davor Stojanovski’s novel Solace for the Naked is something truly different: a hybrid, fragmented, and complex novel with huge and sovereign ambition, remarkable plot structure, shifting through space and time (...) Stojanovski is a skilled writer with filigree-like narrative details and solutions. An eventful plot with a luxurious and serene flow of sentences creates a sea of images and associations. Rich in symbolism, tranquil lyricism, and tamely binding up something refuting to be bound up.
Olivera Kjorveziroska
A subtle paraphrase of a gothic tale, Solace for the Naked is a novel with a gloomy aura (...) with the understated charm of a subdued melancholy that unites reflection on the past with old-fashioned sepia photos. This melancholy juxtaposes the tension of the ominous with the meanings of consolation, when one's own past is accepted as part of an unquestionable order – without any protest against the unjust outcome and without horror of the undeserved absence.
Saša Ćirić
