Conversation with authors Miljenko Jergović (Croatia/BiH) and Lidija Dimkovska (Macedonia)
We wouldn’t be wrong to say that Miljenko Jergović is probably the most resounding author's name from the areas of former Yugoslavia, for whom the editors always have find it hard to decide to write whether it belongs to this or that national literature. He was born in Sarajevo, which he never left, although he moved to Zagreb in 1993. It is one of the few literary oases in which the dream of community lives. An author who writes with the ease of a bird in flight, and whose creative swing and range amazes even the biggest skeptics. Even in the most difficult times, Jergović rose from the ashes of the bloody civilizations of the Balkans as a fortress of reason, as a voice from the future. Although metaphors are an inescapable part of his work, he is both human and artistically, anchored in the present moment. And in that impossible, tantalizing position, it seems that more countries are competing to get him as their fellow citizen, than that he is seeking for one and only homeland.
On the other hand, Lidija Dimkovska is also the author of nomadism, unmooredness, self-questioning and border-crossing. An author who always looks critically at the space and circumstances of her home, wherever it is. She was born in Skopje, Bucharest gives her life and writing breadth, and Ljubljana human love. Constantly on the road, on forced literary exile, in social reexamination and aesthetic exploration. As in the past, so in the latest novel, she remains interested in the themes of home, belonging, displacement, identity.
Jergović and Dimkovska are authors who have never sat side by side at a literary feast, but whose creations are so amenable to it, that it seems really strange why it hasn't happened before. “BookStar” fans will have this exclusive opportunity.
The event will be moderated by Aleksandar Madjarovski and Biljana Crvenkovska.