The Well - FSK - forum slovanskih kultur

The Well

Dimitar Baševski

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 (1943), novelist, poet, translator and publisher. Graduated from the Faculty of humanities at the Sts. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje. From 2000 to 2006 he was president of the Macedonian PEN Centre.

Author of the following works: Stranger, novel, 1969; Return, novel, 1972; Splinter, novel, 1974; While the Bell tolls there is no death, novel, 1980; A year in the life of Ivan Plevnesh, novel, 1985; The House of Life, poetry, 1987; The Sarajanovo Carnation, novel, 1990; Anya’s Diary, novel for children, 1994; Temporal Stay, poetry, 1995; Time overcome, poetry, 1998; The Well, novel, 2001; Cornerstone (Agolen kamen), poetry, 2005 and The Brother (Bratot), novel, 2007; Reading from my Hand, poetry, 2010; Windows, novel, 2010; Mark. Dream, poetry, 2012; Windows, new version, novel, 2013, The Master, short stories 2013 and The Turnings, poetry, 2016.

Some of Baševski’s books have been translated in more European languages and received important awards.

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.