Nikola Madzirov's Recommendation of Communist Intimacy (2014)



European Society of Authors (here) is a literary and intellectual platform dedicated to promoting translation as an everyday cultural imperative.






Communist Intimacy made it on to the European Society of Author's (Berlin, Paris) Finnegan's List of 30 books for 2015

The world's famous Macedonian poet, Nikola Madzirov, offers his recommendation of three Macedonian books: Zhivko Chingo's The Great Water (1971), Vlada Urosevic's My Cousin Emilia (1994), and my Communist Intimacy (2008).

On this link you can read Madzirov's recommendations.




Nikola Madzirov writes:


"With Communist Intimacy, Jasna Koteska uncovers a society entirely built on suspicion and fear and upon monopoly over reality. It is a book about controlled life of her father, the distinguished Macedonian poet Jovan Koteski (1932-2001), who was pursued by the state's secret services for more than forty years. His secret file was called 'Intimist' - a sick metaphor for intimacy, considered the number one enemy by the state, for whom crying out loud when alone or remaining silent when everyone else in the crowd is shouting were signs of potential danger. Her father, who ironically renamed his file from 'Intimist' to 'The Biography of My Friends', was released from prison thanks to the public declarations of Allen Ginsberg who visited Macedonia in 1986. However, secret services continued to relentlessly record Koteski's movements and conversations. The state hoped to develop the writer's consciousness of self-censure in all matters except aesthetics. 

Jasna Koteska bolsters her personal story with carefully selected quotations by Lacan, Foucault, Kafka, Zizek or Derrida, weaving a profound narrative about how ideologies that believe in their own eternity erase man's thirst for immortality."




You can read Nikola Madzirov's recommendation on the SEUA website here.


Communist Intimacy was published by the NAP, Washington DC in March 2014. For more information about the book visit the publisher's webpage here.


You can order the Communist Intimacy book from the publisher's website here, or from Amazon here.



 

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