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“Dark, absorbing and deeply moving… when memories remain unresolved there can be chaos. I loved this novella.” – John Sam Jones
'An intricate, puzzling story plaited between three characters - the nameless narrator, the mysterious and elusive Ivan and self-centred Vlado - forensically examines their tortured love triangle.' – Mihangel Morgan, author of Melog
Translated from Macedonian by Christina E. Kramer
Winner of a Pen Translates Award
While kissing Agathon, my soul leapt to my lips…
D i s a p p e a r a n c e – S e a r c h – R e t u r n
A story of time slipping, desire just out of reach, like memories lost…
At the beginning of the summer, I had to spend two weeks in hospital… If I hadn’t fallen from the balcony, what happened later would likely never have happened at all.
So begins a memoir by a man trying to come to terms with the loss of a lover who is now a famous writer. He is given one more chance to forget by Vlado, the charismatic actor, who is not as successful as he believes. They will have a holiday to recover – find the lost love between them and bury their shared memories of Ivan. It will be a summer without you.
Petar Andonovski was born in 1987, in Kumanovo, north Macedonia. He studied general and comparative literature at the Faculty of Philology, at the University of Cyril and Methodius in Skopje. He has published one poetry collection and four novels. In 2015 his novel The Body One Must Live In won the national award for Novel of the Year. Fear of Barbarians received the 2020 European Union Prize for Literature.
Christina E. Kramer is professor emerita at the University of Toronto. She is the author of numerous books on Macedonian language and the Balkans and a translator of Macedonian literature, including Fear of Barbarians by Petar Andonovski; Freud’s Sister, by Goce Smilevski; My Father’s Books, The Time of the Goats and The Path of the Eels, by Luan Starova; and A Spare Life, by Lidija Dimkovksa.