Research Catalog

Title

A spare life / Lidija Dimkovska ; translated by Christine E. Kramer.

Author

Dimkovska, Lidija, 1971-

Publication

• San Francisco, CA : Two Lines Press, [2016]
• ©2016

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Kramer, Christina Elizabeth (Professor)

Description

490 pages; 21 cm

Summary

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.

Uniform Title

• Резервен живот
• Rezerven život. English

Alternative Title

• Резервен живот
• Rezerven život.

Subjects

• Communism
• Families
• Fiction
• Domestic fiction
• Yugoslavia
• Europe
• Brothers and sisters
• Communism > Yugoslavia > Fiction
• Families > Europe > Fiction
• Siblings > Fiction
• Conjoined twins > Fiction

Genre/Form

• Domestic fiction
• Fiction

Language (note)

• English translated from Macedonian.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

ISBN

• 1931883556
• 9781931883559

OCLC

• 935988513
• SCSB-12742104

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library