A Spare Life

by Lidija Dimkovska, Christina E. Kramer (Translator)

Overview

Zlata and Srebra are 12-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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781931883573
Publisher:	Two Lines Press
Publication date:	09/19/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	428
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Lidija Dimkovska is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2013 European Union Prize for Literature for A Spare Life. She is also the author of the poetry collection pH Neutral History (Copper Canyon Press, 2012), which was a finalist for the 2013 Best Translated Book Award, and Do Not Awaken Them With Hammers (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2006). She lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Christina E. Kramer is a professor of Slavic and Balkan languages and linguistics at the University of Toronto. She is the author of numerous books on the Macedonian language and the Balkans and is the translator of Freud's Sister, The Time of the Goats, and My Father's Books. She lives in Toronto.

Editorial Reviews

08/15/2016
In poet and writer Dimkovska’s (pH Neutral History) kaleidoscopic, bighearted novel, Zlata and Srebra, twins conjoined at the head, grow up in communist Skopje, Yugoslavia, in the mid-1980s, a period of great personal turmoil for the girls, set against the backdrop of civil unrest and the arrival of democracy and capitalism. Living in a comfortable if unadorned and “radically pessimistic” household with a melancholic mother who “focused on her death, not on her life,” the girls suffer the predictable jibes of their classmates and neighbors, create lasting friendships, excel academically, undergo sexual awakening, deal with the vagaries of extended families, and wish nothing more than to be freed one day of their physical bond to one another. Zlata, the more bookish of the two, narrates for the both of them. The plodding first half is populated by dozens of characters, shadows who brush past Zlata and Srebra, leaving relentlessly negative impressions on the twins. In those sections, the author contextualizes their lives more than necessary—though those stories anchor the characters deep in their Macedonian heritage and their faith, adding layers of richness and historical perspective as they move to London in the late 1990s for risky, life-changing surgery—ending with Srebra’s falling in love with Darko, the son of a wealthy architect and vice president in the opposition party. That and subsequent relationships drive the book’s action. Zlata, too, finds her soulmate, and through her persistence in the face of multiple tragedies she becomes the strong, willful, independent woman that her mother and her sister could never be. With the passage of her own twins into adolescence, she finally accepts the contentment that comes from appreciating life’s simple pleasures. “Let at least eat cucumbers without bitterness,” Zlata muses in a late-night epiphany, “and when they grow up, may they drink only sweet coffee.” (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"[A] kaleidoscopic, bighearted novel" — Publishers Weekly

“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 Novic, author of Girl at War, finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

“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 Ugrešic, author of Baba Laid an Egg

“The truth is she's unstoppable and will not be ignored.” — the Poetry Foundation

“English-language readers would be poorer without [her].” — Publishers Weekly

“The direst laugh-out-loud sense of humor around . . . transcendent, dizzying, and not to be missed.” — Boston Review

From the Publisher