Skopje – izgubljeni čevlji mesta

The book was published as part of a book program co-financed by the Slovenian Book Agency.

Have you ever been to Skopje? If not, you are invited on a literary journey with the exceptionally witty storyteller Ivan Šopov, who will take you not only through the Old Bazaar and the postcard-perfect places but also into the city’s most hidden corners—its housing estates, basketball courts, football matches, and taverns. You will ride the city bus, go fishing, and engage in philosophical conversations with old men in courtyards while they tinker with their cars. You won’t find this in any tourist guide. And if you have visited Skopje before, you will nostalgically remember the city that no longer exists after invasive urban interventions. A colorful collection of short stories about ordinary people, spiced with just the right dose of fine irony, to which you will surely want to return. At the end of the collection, a few “anti-postcards” await you!

Ivan Šopov was born in 1987 in Skopje. He graduated in General and Comparative Literature from the Blaže Koneski Faculty of Philology in Skopje. So far, he has published four works: the short story collections Азбука и залутани записи (Alphabet and Lost Notes, 2010) and 091 – антиразгледници од Скопје (091 – Anti-postcards from Skopje, 2017), the collection of prose poems Меше на годината (The Belly of the Year, 2012), and the book of satirical articles Хрониките на Арслан Новинарски (The Chronicles of Arslan Novinarski, 2018). Ivan Šopov also works as a translator from several languages, has been an editor at Templum Publishing House, a member of the AnOtherStory festival committee, and a moderator of multimedia events at the Struga Poetry Evenings. In 2019, he received the prestigious SEP Award, under which the present collection was published in Slovenian translation.