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Alexander and Death

Aleksandar i smrtta

Severna Makedonija

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Slobodan Mickovic

Alexander died. Alexander is dead. He was ill all spring. For a long time, he stayed in the mountains as if he were occupied there, as if his stay were necessary. He postponed his arrival in Babylon for as long as he could. He was ill…

The novel Aleksandar i smrtta – Alexander and Death takes the highest place in Macedonian contemporary fiction. It is a great work of art with high aspirations and with an ambitious, major theme. It is a novel about the drama and the tragedy of a genius, who imprints this drama, this genius and tragedy irrevocably onto the life and the destiny of his close ones, his people, his epoch, as well as the entire human history. Mickovic’s novel speaks about the illusion and the hope of great people to carve a solid, lasting, eternal constructions out of frail human material. With a well-chosen language, gnomic sentences and suggestive power – as if the readers are witnessing the dramatic ancient events in Babylon themselves – Mickovic paints the drama and the breakdown of Alexander’s Macedonian Empire, but also the numerous lively characters with shaky destinies. Alexander and Death is a wise, seductive and unforgettable novel.

The novel has been translated and published in French, Greek and Serbian.

Slobodan Mickovic (1935-2002), essayist, novelist, translator. Born on 18 June 1935 in Bitola. Died in Skopje on 21 May 2002. Graduated from the Faculty of Philology in Skopje. Works: Contemplation (criticism, 1969), Interpretations (essays and criticism, 1973), The Time of the Poem (essays and criticism, 1983), The Poetic Ideas of Blaže Koneski (study, 1986), Word and Understanding (studies, essays and criticism, 1990), Alexander and the Death (novel, 1992), To Kill an Apostle (novel, 1994), Canal (novel, 1994), The Third Generation (essays and criticism 1955), Oh, Paris that Drank up the River (novel, 1995), History of Black Love (novel, 1969), Change of God (novel, 1998), Literary Courses (essays, criticism, 1998), Mazarena’s House (novel, 1999, 2000, 2002), King Marko (2003). Awards include: “Dimitar Mitrev”, Racinovo priznanie”, first prize of the Zumpres publishing house, Novel of the year – “Utrinski vesnik”, for Mazarena’s House.