Bunar,Vodnjak - FSK - forum slovanskih kultur

Bunar,Vodnjak

The Well

Croatia

Dimitar Bashevski

There's something raw about wells: you can't see what's on the other side. You can't peek inside them.

At the heart of the story is a well as a metaphor for the deep and hidden, a metaphor for digging into one’s own soul to find a small spring in which one can – as in a mirror – see one’s own victories (and the victories of others), as well as things one might not want to see – defeats, moral lapses, mistakes in one’s relationship with oneself and others, vanity. The main character, supposedly driven by noble goals, sets himself the task of digging a well for the people in a remote village, but it turns out that behind good intentions there is also vanity and a desire for supremacy. The author reveals the spiritual and moral consequences of his actions. The past and the present intertwine and connect different destinies.

Dimitar Baševski is a novelist and poet. He was born in 1943 in the village of Gjavato near Bitola. He graduated from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Skopje. He worked as a journalist and editor, foreign correspondent and later as a publisher. He was the president of the North Macedonian PEN Center from 2000 to 2006 and has been its honorary president since then.

Baševski is the author of the following novels: The Stranger, The Return, There Is No Death Until the Bell Rings, A Year in the Life of Ivan Plevneš, The Sarajan Carnation, Anja's Diary (for children), The Fountain, Brother; and poetry collections: The House of Life, Temporary Living, Overcoming Time, The Foundation Stone.

His books have been translated into English, Czech, Romanian, Greek, Serbian, Turkish and Albanian. He has received the following awards: the 11th October Award, the Racin Award, the Pečalbarska povelba Award, the Vančo Nikoleski Award, and the Novel of the Year Award for the novel Vodnjak, which was also nominated for the international Balkanika Award in 2002.

Translators: Ljubica Arsovska and Margaret (Peggy) Reid Translation into English.

Ljubica Arsovska

translator

Ljubica Arsovska is a translator with more than 30 years of professional experience. She has been the director and editor-in-chief of the quarterly Kulturen Zivot since 1996 and a freelance translator and interpreter since 2007. She has translated numerous novels, poems, plays and essays published in Macedonia and abroad from Macedonian into English, mostly in collaboration with Peggy Reid or Patricia Marsh Stefanovska.

Margaret Peggy Reid

translator

Margaret Peggy Reid has worked as a lecturer in English at the University of St Cyril and Methodius in Skopje since 1969. She has proofread numerous literary works - plays, poetry and novels, among others. She is the recipient of the Struga Poetry Evenings prize for translation into a foreign language. In 1994 she was awarded the Macedonian Society of Literary Translators Award; twice won first prize for her poetry at the Stratford-upon-Avon Poetry Festival in the UK, and a certificate from Queen Elizabeth II for services to Macedonian literature and culture.