Shortlisted for the 2013 Best Translated Book Awards.
Dimkovska pins readers to the wall with rapid-fire linguistic
energy.--Publishers Weekly, starred review
[Dimkovsaka has the] stunning capacity to transform the ridiculous
into something poignant and utterly precise.--Boston Review
From the intersection of boundaries, Macedonian poet and novelist Lidija
Dimkovska scrutinizes life's customary and trivial details to expose the
consequences--both confusing and edifying--of living in an age of
contradictory ethics. These poems are packed with unusual connections
and surprising detail, and populated with family characters as well as
Bruno Schultz, Laurie Anderson, and George Steiner. Bilingual
presentation, with Macedonian en face.
From Ideal Weight:
Our river can be seen only through a small basement window.
And nobody dies absolutely any more. The middle-class scrapes
the price tags off presents, decorates windows with laser stars, plays
shadow theatre
with rubber gloves on. It makes faces at you as you cry:
I exorcise zombies professionally! Be free again!
and I know if you're too fat or too thin life and death are one and the
same burden.
Only someone of ideal weight can carry the cross upright . . .
Poet and novelist Lidija Dimkovska was born in 1971 in Macedonia and
she earned a doctoral degree in Romanian literature in Bucharest. She
has published six books of poetry and one novel; her work has been
translated into twenty languages. Dimkovska lives and teaches in
Ljubljana, Slovenia.
