Macedonian Boys Too

In September 2000 John Sam Jones published his debut collection of stories inspired by the lives of gay men in Wales. It was entitled Welsh Boys Too and it went on to win a Stonewall Honor Book Award.

In 2022 Petar Adonovski’s novel The Summer Without You became the first book about a romantic relationship between men published in the Macedonian language.

It has won a Pen Translates Award and is now published in English for the first time.

Here Jones interviews Adonovski and its translator, the Canadian writer and academic, Christina E Kramer exclusively for Nation.Cymru on literature, life and love.

John Sam Jones

“The Summer Without You is a short novel. I read it in an afternoon – and I loved it.  Here’s what we talked about.”

Many congratulations Petar on the publication of The Summer Without You and thank you Christina for the beautiful English translation.  Thank you both for agreeing to this interview.

What influences and memories stand out from your childhood?

Petar: I grew up in a small town, in the 90s after the disintegration of Yugoslavia and during the wars. I am happy that Macedonia was the only one of the former republics that did not experience war. Those were the years of the transition, closed borders, complete isolation. My parents were working on the island of Crete so I was lucky to spend every summer outside the borders of my country. That is why it is not a coincidence that Crete is part of my creativity… because since my childhood, the Mediterranean became a part of my identity.

Christina:  I grew up in a large family which valued music, literature, political engagement, and chaos.

As a young person, who or what influenced you?

Petar:  Most important were the studies of comparative literature in Skopje. That was a totally different experience from my early education in a small town where the professors were mostly family folk that cherished traditional values. During my time in Skopje, my professors primarily taught me to read and interpret books as well as the most important lesson in my life: to be a free man. If you are not a free person, you cannot be a writer.

Christina:  I was in university in the nineteen-seventies, a period of social unrest, political activism, and change. I studied Russian, linguistics, and comparative literature. My university interest in Spanish and Russian languages and literatures deepened my literary interests and, my interest in international folk-dancing and music introduced me to Macedonian.

In graduate school, while studying Russian literature and Slavic linguistics, I slowly began specializing in Balkan languages, and, in particular, Macedonian. I have devoted a long career to studying, teaching, and translating Macedonian. Through translation I get to bring together literature, linguistics, and engagement with the world, a synthesis of all those early influences.

What are your influences now?

Petar:  The “small people” can influence me the most right now, the ones that are invisible for the society. The courage of these people to be what they are and to fight for their voice to be heard is important to me not only as a human but also as a writer, because for me literature has always been a fight against the silence.

When did you become aware of wanting to write, did any particular factors play a part?

Petar:  I started writing because I love reading books. I always say for myself that I am firstly a reader and after that a writer. If I need to choose between those two, I choose reading.

How do you go about writing a book?

Petar:  I am one of the writers that firstly creates the book in their mind and after that I sit down and actually do the writing. What I love most about the writing is the uncertainty. Even though I have the correct map for navigation in my head, I never know if something interesting will draw my attention and instead of following the map, I start walking down some wild and impassable roads.

Tell us a little about The Summer Without You… Where did the inspiration come from?  How important is it to you that your novel has been translated into English?  How did the two of you come together on this project and how was it for you both to work together on the translation?  What do you hope readers will take from the story?

Petar:  After Fear of Barbarians, this is the second of my novels Christina has translated.  She’s a real professional and for me it is easy to work with her as she loves her job.  The translation of the novel to English is very important to me. The Macedonian language is “small language”, spoken by barely two million people, and the translation is opening a door to the whole world.

Christina:  Petar and I worked together on his novel Fear of Barbarians, which was also published by Parthian. Petar is an absolute pleasure to work with. We met quite by chance outside the Ili-Ili bookstore in Skopje. That first conversation was fun, and I remembered the pleasure of that chance meeting. In translating his works, the first thing I notice is that his prose is deceptively simple.

It moves easily from Macedonian to English, but as you work through the novel, you start seeing the connections, through language and image, that wind through the book. What looks simple becomes increasingly complex as characters deepen, literary allusions are layered in, and the labyrinth of the story starts to untangle in the reader’s mind.

When I have questions, I send them to Petar, and he generously responds quickly, and, when I have a completed draft, he reads it and sends back comments. We have had some lively conversations in Skopje, and I always look forward to our collaboration. I should add that I am currently working on his next novel, I won’t Tell, but I won’t tell you more about that now!

Am I right in understanding that The Summer Without You is the first novel from North Macedonia with a gay theme?  What’s the significance of this in your country?

Petar:  Yes, The Summer Without You is the first Macedonian queer novel. It drew a lot of attention when it was published four years ago in Macedonia. Back then I believed that the Macedonian society had changed and was not as homophobic as I’d thought. Now, after my latest novel – I won’t Tell – was published, I have realized that most of the interest then was curiosity… that people only wanted to see “what’s inside”.

I won’t Tell explores queer parenting in Macedonia and many of my writing colleagues and many of my readers have told me that it’s too early to write on subjects like this.  I now appreciate that writing queer literature in Macedonia is like walking on a wire.

Christina, tell me something about translating North Macedonian literature.

Christina:  I have been translating literature from Macedonian for almost twenty years. I have been so fortunate to work with a wide variety of authors, and genres. While I have translated from other languages, I prefer to translate from Macedonian because I have had the good fortune to travel there almost every year, and to live in Toronto with its own vibrant Macedonian community. As a result, Macedonian feels very alive to me.

I am translating authors who have lived across a century of history in the Balkans, from the nineteen twenties to the twenty twenties, and I have translated novels, poetry, short stories, essays. It doesn’t take more than a few minutes every day to be reminded how language is always in flux. There is no “knowing” a language, there is only “learning” a language. When I learned my first Macedonian folksong decades ago, I had no idea where it would lead. It is an absolute pleasure and honour to be able to amplify the voices of talented writers who write in Macedonian.

 Books by Petar Andonovski available in English:

The Summer Without You is published this month by Parthian.

Fear of Barbarians was published by Parthian in 2022

Parthian Books

A fascinating talk by Christina E. Kramer can be found here:

Petar Andonovski is one of the leading voices in contemporary Macedonian literature. He has published one poetry collection and five novels. The Body One Must Live In won the Macedonian award for fiction. Fear of Barbarians received the 2020 European Union Prize for Literature. His work has been translated into several European languages.

Christina E. Kramer is professor emerita at the University of Toronto. She is the author of numerous articles on the Macedonian language and the Balkans and a translator of Macedonian literature.

John Sam Jones won the Wales Book of the Year for Creative Non-Fiction in 2023 for his memoir The Journey Is Home.