Aleksandar Prokopiev
The number of books published by the Macedonian author Aleksandar Prokopiev (1953, Skopje) counts over twenty (short story collections, novellas, essays and one novel), and their translations into Balkan and world languages are even more numerous. For example, eight translations of his works have been published in Serbian so far (most of them in the edition of "Geopoetika").
In 2000, the Encyclopedia Britannica highlighted his book of hybrid prose "Anti- Instructions for Personal Use" as one of the most interesting annual publications from Southeast Europe. In 2011, for the book of fairy tales for adults "The Tiny Human" he received the prestigious international “Balkanika” award (previously, in 2007, his novel "The Peeper" was shortlisted for it). In 2022, in the latest edition of the extensive, renowned French history of European literature „Les Lettres Européennes“, his prose is analyzed in the chapter "Trends and Contemporary Figures 1989 – 2021",, where it is compared with the narration of inventive storytellers such as Barthélemy, Calvino…
In addition to his lifelong obsession with reading and writing, Prokopiev has also had successful creative periods in rock and roll, alternative theater, scripts for animated films, etc.
“The Young Master of the Game; …OR…; Sailing to the South”
"Antolog", Skopje, 2025
My first three published books were written in three cities (Belgrade, Skopje, Paris, and then Skopje again) in the period of a liberated, independent literary and cultural scene full of experimentation, rebellion and persistent steps away from established norms. The end of the seventies and the beginning of the eighties was a time with a strong manifest energetic impetus in confronting the great changes in the external and internal world, when in literature, as well as in music, fine arts, theater, film, relatives came together, provoked, led debates, polemics, but also created valuable achievements, under the obvious influence of postmodern poetics.
If I had to somehow separate the mutual connection of the three books in the intertwining of the real and the fictional through short narrative forms, then: the miniatures in "The Young Master of the Game" are closest to narrative poetic prose, "...or..." with long impulsive sentences that begin and end with three periods, are expressively acting fragments, in "Sailing to the South" the compositional procedure results in the creation of "real" stories.
Special thanks to the publishing house "Antolog" for its offer to republish these three books, inevitable in the exciting journey of my writing self-discovery.
Aleksandar Prokopiev