Ivan Šopov was born in 1987 in Skopje. He graduated in General and Comparative Literature from the Faculty of Philology "Blaže Koneski" in his hometown. He has published the collection of short stories "Alphabet and the Stray Notes" (2010),for which he received the "Novite!" award for best debut prose manuscript, the collection of prose poems “Belly of the year” (2012), the book of collected satirical texts "Chronicles of Arslan Novinarski" (2018), the collection of short stories "Skopje: the Lost Shoes of the City" (2020) and the collection of short stories "Zentrifuga" (2024). He also writes poetry and haiku. His stories and poems have been translated into a dozen languages. He translated books into Macedonian by Miroslav Krleža, Marta Nusbaum, Zvonko Karanović, Madeleine Thien, Bojan Babić, Asja Bakić, Mihail Vešim, Ambrose Beers, Dragoslav Mihailović... Together with Vladimir Lukaš, he founded the Cultural Center 750.
“Zentrifuge”
“Begemot”, Skopje, 2024
The title itself, with its play on words between "zen" and "centrifuge", indicates playfulness, parody, as well as an excellent knowledge of the stories that are the subject of reinterpretation, which is a necessary prerequisite for a successful parody. The stories are seemingly simple, written in an easy, understandable style. But, in fact, they contain a deeper theme because, through unexpected, witty twists, they reveal and shake up the firmly built, consistent ethical views of Zen stories, often with shocking results.