Review: A Spare Life

A Spare Life by Lidija Dimkovska
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book has a history on my shelves. It comes from Two Lines Press but I actually received it a few years ago from the Malaprop's paperback-first subscription. The bookseller who selected those titles has proven to have excellent taste even if I didn't get to them right away.

And this will count for Women in Translation Month and Read the World 21 (Balkans) as well as the #exyulit challenge - not to mention I get to check North Macedonia off my Around the World list and for my Europe 2021 challenge. This book is good evidence that reading challenges get us to read books we might not get to otherwise!

This rather long novel is the story of twin sisters who were born conjoined at the head. It's also the story of Yugoslavia, Macedonia, and the split of the country through war, religious, and political change. The author tries to use the sisters to speak metaphorically about the region, and it wasn't too obtuse to grasp, even in translation. The very long chapters cover specific time periods for the sisters.

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