The Book of the Sky

Kniga na neboto
Severna Makedonija
Krste-Chachanski
Krste Chachanski
As a child, I stole a pair of domestic doves from the dovecote of Damjan Frtsul. That is my only theft, someone else’s property transferred into my hands. I identified my power with the sky, but only in my thoughts, because I was afraid of letting them fly. I knew that the sky is only one, and they could go back to Frtsul.

Krste Chachanski is one of the most talented and most authentic Macedonian prose writers of his generation – the generation which started out from the postmodernism of Jorge Luis Borges. His choice to depict a theme from the historical past of the Macedonian people in his novel Kniga na neboto – The Book of the Sky was thereby a kind of a surprise for the readers. Yet he stayed consistent to his poetics by what he says in the motto of the novel: “he is not retelling history, but is speaking about the destiny of words such as the word Book”.  Well chosen characters and destinies inhabiting the area around the Ohrid Lake during the Ottoman Empire also enable him to show the marginal areas of the people that do not fit in the big matrixes and schemes, which most often are the ones who suffer, together with the people trying to surpass the limits of their time.

Krste Chachanski (1949-2003), poet, short story writer, novelist. Graduated from the Faculty of Philology in Skopje. Works: Lakeside (poetry, 1972), Letters (short stories, 1982), The Bermuda Triangle (short stories, 1992), Labyrinth (poetry, 1992), God’s Dream (novel, 1994), ABC-Book (poetry for children, 1995), The Shadow of the Bat (novel, 1995), Indigo and Kvazar (short stories, 1999), The Book of the Sky (novel, 2000), L’ombre de la chauve-souris (prose, 2002)
Awards include: “Misla”, “Racinovo priznanie”, “Stale Popov” etc.