Novel
Вкусот на праските
Not translated into English
Vlada Urošević · 1965
Synopsis
In a Skopje crushed by a heatwave, the novel interweaves the viewpoints of Dragan, a student back before the start of term, and of Olga, a sensual young woman to whom the peach, fruit of immortality, gives the book its title. The earthquake of 1963 overturns their lives and carries the story as far as Lake Ohrid; an authorial voice slips in extracts from Herodotus and from studies of the earthquake and the lake, mixing fact and fiction.
Context
The novel appeared in 1965 in Skopje, from Kultura, two years after the catastrophe that had devastated the city. The first of the author's novels, it would be followed nearly thirty years later by My Cousin Emilia, The Court Poet in a Flying Machine and Wild League. Its palimpsest structure and narrative games have led it to be regarded as the first Macedonian postmodern novel, three years before postmodernism appeared in that literature. It has been translated into neither French nor English.
Who it is for
To relive the Skopje earthquake in a sensual and learned novel, where ancient history and the summer of 1963 meet.
Prizes and reception
Marija Markovska compares it to a child born before term, ahead of its time and still present in Macedonian letters.