Photo: Lilika Strezoska
Curiosity and wonder: to see the small human dramas, the city scenes that most often pass almost unnoticed, curiosity to peek behind the ordinariness of events.
Biography
Ivan Shopov was born in Skopje, 1987 and graduated General and Comparative Literature at the “Ss. Cyril and Methodius” University in his hometown.
He is author of the books “An Alphabet and Notes Gone Astray” (short stories, 2010), for which he received the award “Novite!” for best debut prose, “Belly of the Year” (poems in prose, 2012), “The Chronicles of Arslan Dailey” (satirical articles, 2018), “Skopje: the Lost Shoes of the City” (short stories, 2020), “Zentrifuge” (short stories, 2024). He also writes poetry and haiku. His poems and short stories have been translated into several languages: English, Serbian, Croatian, Albanian, Slovenian, Bulgarian, Czech, Greek, Romanian and German.
He translated books by Ambrose Bierce, Madeleine Thien, Roman Kissiov, Mikhail Veshim, Miroslav Krleža, Bojan Babić, Asja Bakić, Dragoslav Mihailović, Irena Vrkljan, Zvonko Karanović, Martha Nussbaum, Dimana Yordanova and others into Macedonian.
In the period from 2012 to 2018 he worked as an editor in the publishing house Templum and on the internet portal Okno.
He was part of the organizing team of the literary festivals “Another Story” and “ArtArea”. He is one of the founders of the coffee-bookshop “Bukva” in Skopje and the mobile cultural center “KC 750”.
Outstanding title:
SKOPJE: THE CITY’S LOST SHOES (2020)
“Skopje: The City’s Lost Shoes” is a collection of eighty micro-stories, or “anti-postcards,” written between 2016–2020. The book focuses on the hidden, everyday life of Skopje, contrasting with the city’s recent architectural transformations. Instead of monuments and grand narratives, it captures the voices of “small people” and overlooked phenomena absent from textbooks and postcards. Against the backdrop of baroque facades and militant monuments, these micro-dramas reveal the city’s true vitality. The book argues that Skopje’s essence lies not in its imposed “big story,” but in the intimate, vibrant tales that keep it alive.
No. of pp: 98
Rights sold to:
Slovenia.
Rights :
Ivan Shopov
samo.za.ovaa.prilika@gmail.com
Latest title:
ZENTRIFUGE (2024)
The very title of this book, with its play on words between “zen” and “centrifuge”, indicates playfulness, parody, as well as excellent knowledge of the stories that are the subject of reinterpretation, which is a necessary prerequisite for a successful parody. The stories are seemingly simple, written in an easy, understandable style. But in fact, they contain a deeper theme because, through unexpected, witty twists, they reveal and shake up the firmly established, consistent ethical views of Zen stories, often with shocking results. In the other cycles of the collection, which consist of micro-stories, Shopov leaves his recognizable mark: drawing out marginalized perspectives, alienating or destabilizing ordinary situations, applying mutually conflicting narrative procedures to produce an effect of humor and new perspectives.
No. of pp: 129
Rights:
Begemot Publishing House
contact.begemot@gmail.com