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1.FOREWORD REVIEWSBook ReviewsA Spare LifeForeword RatingReviewed by Natasha Gilmore November 4, 2016 With its masterful writing and epic scope, it is certain to find its own footing as an enduring work of world literature.Late in the novel A Spare Life, by Lidija Dimkovska, a character asserts that “every pain is both local and global,” an encapsulation for the grand scope of this powerful and intimate family saga set among the political strife of the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia.Zlata and Srebra are sisters born conjoined at the head. Their names, “gold” and “silver,” are looked upon as a cruel joke for their fate, which draws ridicule in their 1980s Skopje suburb. The girls come of age amidst their own physical struggles, and their attachment, along with their attendant frustrations and hopes at separation, often parallel the political turmoil of the time.When the sisters face a serious personal disagreement, the separation becomes a necessity, and they travel to London to undergo the operation, “so [they] could separate from each other—as if [they] were two former republics of Yugoslavia … by mutual agreement.”The book’s power is not only in its metaphor, which is effected with a deft hand, but in its scope, which shows the power, subtlety, and difficulties of sustained intimacy for women over generations. The very physical connection the women have is a recurrent theme, as is the separation of head and heart: “That is how it is with people; their hearts are in their heads, and their heads in their hearts,” Zlata observes.Dimkovksa’s writing is a revelation in economy. There is not a wasted word, not an erroneous character. The plot could border on the melodramatic but instead unfolds in a breathless saga of tragedy and depth that is rendered in beautiful, resilient, and spare prose.Dimkovksa earned the European Union Prize for Literature, and her last work to be translated into English was nominated for a Best Translated Book Award in 2013. A Spare Life is a rare work of insight—both political and personal—and with its masterful writing and epic scope, it is certain to find its own footing as an enduring work of world literature.2. WORLD LITERATURE TODAY:A Spare Life by Lidija DimkovskaFICTIONAuthor:?Lidija DimkovskaTranslator:?Christina E. KramerSan Francisco. Two Lines Press. 2016. 532 pages.Zlata, a Siamese twin conjoined at the head to her sister, Srebra, is the unlikely protagonist of Macedonian writer Lidija Dimkovska’s remarkable novel A Spare Life. The girls’ names in Macedonian—“zlata” means gold and “srebra,” silver—ironically contradict the misfortune of their deformity. The twins grow up in the 1980s in a squalid Skopje apartment with parents who are ill-equipped emotionally and financially to meet the challenges of raising them. The girls’ mother is a caustic, miserly woman who never shows love, only resentment, toward her daughters; their father is withdrawn and emasculated by his domineering wife and the daily struggle of providing for his family while the country breaks apart. Neighbors encountering the twins cross themselves, brandish the evil eye, or spit over their left shoulders to ward off the evil and bad luck that afflicts the girls.Dimkovska’s memorable depiction of the twins’ claustrophobic existence is riveting. The girls’ conjoined heads restrict nearly all of their physical movements—bending, stepping, or turning by one requires the other, instantaneously, to do the same. Even going to the bathroom is a shared project: one sits on a trashcan next to the toilet while the other empties herself. Dimkovska’s depiction of the girls’ dismal lives is leavened with wry humor, as when Zlata concludes that replicating Sylvia Plath’s suicide would be impossible because standard-size ovens offer too little space to stuff two heads.The girls live with the awful reality that their joined bodies subjugate their separate, individual personalities, and the psychological consequences of this are enormous. Srebra enrolls in law school, forcing Zlata to become a law student as well. And when Srebra falls in love with Darko, Zlata is unable to absent herself from their every kiss and intimacy. Each girl is the other’s unwilling captor, and this fact erases nearly all sibling affection. The two cannot even argue properly because in order to make eye contact with one another they must be facing a mirror. Dimkovska explores these nightmarish burdens with sensitivity and beautifully articulated writing that shines in Christina Kramer’s translation.?The twins decide to undergo a high-risk separation surgery when they are twenty-four. The procedure’s uncertain outcome parallels the existential threat facing Macedonia from ethnic hatreds roiling it. Through these intersecting public and personal tragedies, A Spare Life poignantly reveals universal truths about the inability to ever become completely severed from the circumstances of your birth. (Editorial note: Read an interview from this issue with Dimkovska.)Lori FeathersDallas, Texas3. WWB Daily The Watchlist: October 2016 By M. Bartley SeigelEvery month, Words without Borders reviews editor M. Bartley Seigel shares a handful of recently released or forthcoming titles he’s excited about, books he hopes you’ll agree are worth our good attentions.?From Two Lines Press, A Spare Life by Lidija Dimkovska, translated from the Macedonian by Christina Kramer; 428 pages; ISBN 9781931883559; US$14.95Says the publisher: “Zlata and Srebra are twelve-year-old twins conjoined at the head. It is 1984 and they live in Skopje, which will one day be the capital of Macedonia but is currently a part of Yugoslavia. A Spare Life tells the story of their childhood, from their only friend Roze to their neighbor Bogdan, so poor that he one day must eat his pet rabbit. Treated as freaks and outcasts—even by their own family—the twins just want to be normal girls. But after an incident that almost destroys their bond as sisters, they fly to London, determined to be surgically separated. Will this be their liberation, or only more tightly ensnare them?“At once extraordinary and quotidian, A Spare Life is a chronicle of two girls who are among the first generation to come of age under democracy in Eastern Europe. Written in touching prose by an author who is also a master poet, it is a saga about families, sisterhood, immigration, and the occult influences that shape a life. Funny, poignant, dark, and sharply observed, Zlata and Srebra reveal an existence where even the simplest of actions is unlike any we’ve ever experienced.”Says basically everybody: Publishers Weekly said English-language readers would be poorer without Dimkovska and called A Spare Life “a kaleidoscopic, bighearted novel.” The Poetry Foundation says of her: “The truth is she’s unstoppable and will not be ignored.”Says me: “Dimkovska’s résumé reads like a beehive of transnational literary success in the making and A Spare Life will only intensify the righteous buzz. Maybe you’ve already seen her read this month, or will soon get a chance to, as she’s currently on a ten-city US tour. Regardless of all that, this latest book is weird, weirdly generous, and generously beautiful—which is the best combination, in my honest opinion—and is maybe my favorite read from October.”Published Oct 18, 2016???Copyright 2016 M. Bartley Seigel About M. Bartley Seigel M. Bartley Seigel is the author of the poetry collection?This Is What They Say (Typecast Publishing) and his writing has appeared in DIAGRAM, Forklift Ohio, H_NGM_N, Lumberyard Magazine, Michigan Quarterly Review, Pamplemousse, Thrush, and numerous elsewheres. He was the founding editor of?PANK Magazine, and is currently book review?editor for Words without Borders. He?teaches literature and creative writing at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan.?Words without Borders opens doors to international exchange through translation, publication, and promotion of the best international literature. Every month we publish select prose and poetry on our site. In addition we develop print anthologies, work with educators to bring literature in translation into classrooms, host events with foreign authors, and maintain an extensive archive of global writing.4. Early Gems in the Hunt for the Best Translated Fiction of 2016! [BTBA?2017] 12 October 16This week’s Best Translated Book Award post is by Lori Feathers, anAssistant Managing Editor at Asymptote, freelance book critic and member of the National Book Critics Circle. Follow her online @LoriFeathers. For more information on the BTBA, “like” our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter. And check back here each week for a new post by one of the judges.While it’s still very early days in the months-long process of reading and evaluating the hundreds of eligible fiction titles for the 2017 Best Translated Book Award, I’ve already made some discoveries that impressed me with compelling narratives and expressive writing that is skillfully sustained by very solid translations. In compiling this list I noticed a common theme: each of these books explores an extraordinary relationship, a bond that consumes and sometimes destroys those within it.A Spare Life by Lidija Dimkovska (tr. Christina E. Kramer)It would be difficult to find a relationship more foreign to most of us than that of conjoined twins. Dimkovska places us inside the mind and body of Zlata, joined at the head to her sister, Srebra, with exceptional detail and perspective. The girls’ physical and emotional entrapment to one another is made all the more difficult by their troubled, impoverished home life and the political and economic instability that rocks 1990s Macedonia. As the girls reach adulthood their situation becomes increasingly unbearable, and Dimkovska draws not-so-subtle parallels between the surgical separation of the twins and the rending of the former Yugoslavia. The writing is lyrical and beautifully perceptive, full of sensitivity and nuance for the girls’ affliction and the way that it controls their lives.5. Standard October 19, 2016 by twolines 5 Ways of Looking at Lidija DimkovskaA Spare Life by Lidija Dimkovska (tr. Christina Kramer) has been racking up attention since its release last week. Here are five different takes on the book, giving you 5 different methods to find you way in to this great saga of sisterhood, war, communism, and living as a conjoined twin.1. Publishers Weekly: A “kaleidoscopic, bighearted novel”Publishers Weekly gets the best 3-word summary of A Spare Life. The book is indeed kaleidoscopic—subjects it takes in would include: the fall of communism, sisters coming of age, the strangeness of being conjoined twins, growing up in a communist country, love, heartbreak, the occult, the Balkan Wars. And indeed, the book is very bighearted, never shrinking from all the terrible things that get thrown at Zlata and Srebra, but doing it all with an honestly and poignancy.2. Words Without Borders: “Dimkovska’s résumé reads like a beehive of transnational literary success in the making”Who are we to disagree? Dimkovska won the EU Prize for this book, she’s gotten a rave from Dubravka Ugre?i?, the reigning queen of Balkan literature, she’s studied at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and she has released acclaimed poetry collections with Ugly Duckling Presse and Copper Canyon Press. If that isn’t a beehive of transnational literary success in the making, we don’t know what is. A Spare Life is her biggest, most complex book to date, and we think it’d be great if it gets ther the English-language acclaim she deserves.3. Lidija Dimkovska: “I felt guilty to be from Macedonia, which was then the so-called oasis of peace”In a must-read essay over at Literary Hub, Dimkovska talks about the generation of literature that was lost thanks to the Balkan Wars and how the writers who lived through that (as did Dimkovksa) have internalized it in their work and made it into literature. A Spare Life is very much in this tradition, as Dimkovska explains in the essay. And she also discusses the awkwardness of being from Macedonia, which was a relatively safe, stable place during the wars.4. Unabridged Bookstore: “Keenly observed, poignant, and penetrating, A SPARE LIFE is quickly becoming one of our favorite books of the year”To make a huge understatement, when you’re writing a book about life from the perspective of a twin conjoined at the head, it really puts your observational skills to the test. One of the most rewarding things about A Spare Life is seeing just how authentically Dimkovska brings this world to life. But not only does she nail that world, she also nails the bureaucratic, provincial, weird world of living in a communist country, and then seeing that all fall apart. Just on the level of observation alone, we can see why A Spare Life wins such big praise.5. Elliott Bay Bookstore: “Glad to have Lidija Dimkovska here tonight with @CopperCanyonPrs’s Tonaya to discuss A SPARE LIFE from @TwoLinesPress”In addition to being an award-winning novelist, Dimkovska is also a very talented poet, having released acclaimed collections with Ugly Duckling Presse and Copper Canyon Press. Here she is with Copper Canyon’s Managing Editor Tonaya Craft during an event earlier this month at Seattle independent bookstore Elliott Bay Bookstore. Although A Spare Life is first and foremost a novel, you can definitely see Dimkovska’s poet’s eye in the acute observations and the interesting way she puts words together.6. TWO LINES PRESS:A coming-of-age saga of two sisters, with an incredible twist . . .?It is 1984, and 12-year-old twins Zlata and Srebra live in communist Yugoslavia. In many ways their lives are like that of young girls anywhere, except for one immense difference: Zlata’s and Srebra’s bodies are conjoined at their heads.A Spare Life tells the story of their emergence from girls to young adults, from their desperately poor, provincial childhoods to their determination to become successful, independent women. After years of discovery and friendship, their lives are thrown into crisis when an incident threatens to destroy their bond as sisters. They fly to London, determined to be surgically separated—but will this dangerous procedure free them, or only more tightly ensnare them?In A Spare Life master poet and award-winning novelist Lidija Dimkovska lovingly tells the lives of two astonishing girls caught up in Eastern Europe’s transition from communism to democracy. A saga about families, sisterhood, and being outcasts, A Spare Life reveals an existence where even the simplest of actions is unlike any we’ve ever experienced.7. IN THE BOOK: “Lidija Dimkovska enriches our contemporary museum of literary wonders with her powerful, grotesque, weird details and episodes told within the merry old novelistic tradition.”— Dubravka Ugre?i?, author of Baba Laid an Egg “A Spare Life uses the boldest of metaphors – the life of conjoined twins – to embody the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. This strange and wonderful novel brings to mind Elena Ferrante and Magda Szabó in the acuity of its social observation and the depth of its mordant humor.”— Katie Kitamura, author of The Longshot and A Separation“Dimkovska has an eye for detail befitting of a poet and the stark, unrelenting prose of a master storyteller. A Spare Life is a weird and wonderful book, capturing the quirk and complexity of both a declining Yugoslavia, and the inseparable lives of two sisters with clarity, wit, and heart.” — Sara Novi?, author of Girl at War, finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize ................
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