Publishing house Polica from Skopje published Macedonian translation of the novel “The Storyteller” by Slovenian writer Mirana Likar. The book present a unique testimony depicting individual destinies caught in the maelstrom of historical developments during the twentieth century.
“This translation means so much to me and I’m very happy that people can read my book in Macedonian. I express gratitude for the translation to the translator Davor Stojanovski and the publisher Polica,” said the writer Mirana Likar in a statement for Meta.mk.
The novel “The Storyteller” (“Pripovedalec” in Slovenian and “Raskažuvačot” in Macedonian) had initially been published by publishing house Goga from Novo Mesto in 2020. It conveys the story about a man who had to change seven uniforms to survive during the Second World War, which scarred him for life. He was one of the many persons from the region of former Yugoslavia who was forced by history to travel an unimaginably long road.
The story is about adapting to difficult and dangerous circumstances at times of war by hiding one’s identity under an exterior that must be adapted to momentary circumstances. Even though the protagonist manages to survive through his readiness to learn and retell, this is a story about conspiratorial silences and the plague of ideologies that shaped and destroyed human lives.
The novel is based on the true life story of Nikolai Šturm, who during his odyssey which spanned Slovenia, Croatia, Austria, Germany, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Romania, Serbia… also used the names Mikolai Šturm, Wolfgang Fisher and Kolya Nikolaevich Shturm.
Besides chronicling the protagonist’s oral history, the author conducted research of available literature about the period, including two PhD theses on forced mobilization of Slovenes into the German army, family archives, digitalized newspapers and documents from the Digital Library of Slovenia, and completed an online course about the “Phenomenon of War” from Leiden University.
“The Storyteller” was nominated for the Kresnik Award for Best Novel of the Year and for the Cankar Award, provided for literary works spread over different genres.
Mirana Likar (1961) studied at Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana and graduated from Slovenian language and Literature. She started writing relatively late.
Her first short story collection “Sobotne zgodbe” (Saturday Tales) was published in 2009. The collection was nominated for Fabula, the prestigious Slovenian award for short story, as well as for the Debut fiction prize of the Ljubljana Book Fair. She had been publishing in various Slovenian literary publications, wining number of awards for her short stories. After the first short stories collection, she had published three more collections and three novels.
Prior to “The Storyteller”, only one work by Mirana Likar was translated into Macedonian. In 2012 the international journal Blesok – Literature and Other Arts published Macedonian and English translations of her short story “Light in August.”
