Conversation with Spinoza

Razgovor so Spinoza
Severna Makedonija
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Goce Smilevski
You don’t understand me at all. You always answer my questions as if I were asking you, What about reason then? But I’m, in fact, asking you, What about life then?

Goce Smilevski is a young author, born in 1975, a representative of the youngest generation of Macedonian novelists. His novel Razgovor so Spinoza – Conversation with Spinoza belongs to the current in the Macedonian and world novel which finds its motivation in the sphere of ideas. The circular path, which the author then follows, leads to life itself, which is continuously being meditated upon in a constant attempt to find its essence and live it to its fullness if possible. The characters are in this case crucified between living life itself and meditating on the subject of life, between man and the ideal. There lies the entire drama and tragedy of their painful loneliness. They are unable to live a full and passionate life, as is in fact the case of Baruch Spinoza, the great philosopher, here in the role of the main fictional character of the novel (based upon his actual biography or – as the author says – the empty spaces in it). The novel won the Macedonian prize Novel Of The Year in 2003.

Goce Smilevski was educated at the University of Sts. Cyril and Methodius in Skopje (Comparative Literature), at Charles University in Prague (Czech language and Czech Literature), and at the Central European University in Budapest (Gender & Culture Studies). He worked as a shop-assistant in Prague, as a teacher of Macedonian language in Kavadarci, and as an archivist in Skopje. Novels: Planet of the Inexperience, 2000, Conversations with Spinoza, 2002. Awards: Blaže Koneski, essay award for “Incest in The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner and Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil”; “Sts. Cyril and Methodius,” on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of Skopje University, Novel of the year by Utrinski vesnik for Razgovori so Spinoza (Conversations with Spinoza) and the EU Prize for Literature for Sigmund’s Freud Sister.