Review of the prose text The Shadow of the Sun- an anahronic dramatic science fiction novel from Ivan

Stojanovski

Ivan Stojanovski is a new name in our literary public; and the novel Shadow of the Sun is his first, yet very mature novel. The author, (who is a student in the class of Worl and Comparative Literature at the Faculty of Philology Blaze Koneski in Skopje) says in the subtitle of the novel it is a science fiction novel, a genre that is rare in modern Macedonian literature. The novel is divided into a number of chapters as follows: The Pagan, The Seven Preachings of Gju-Goj, Shadow of the Sun and The Way Of The Sword. The writing represents a complex tragic-comic symbolic piece, a hybrid realization brought to life by editing and symbioses of epic-lyric and dramatic elements, from one side and on mythical themes and motives with scientific technological achievements viewed from another side. Structured like a movie scenario, developing the story non lineary explaining the end in the beginning, the work of Stojanovski is marked with a rather dense fable, with a whole serial of events and characters who are linked to each other in a crafty way as a remarkable treasure of discourses (philosophical, religious, poetic, native speech...). Although this is the author's first novel, the prose writing Shadow of the Sun speaks of a young author that has excellent knowledge of different areas of the spiritual culture(mythology, anthropology, philosophy, literature...) and succeeds in incorporating the mentioned above into his work with great success. The work is full of numerous allusions and dialogs with the heritage of the cultural history of mankind, in general. The individual, little personal histories, no matter how insignificant- have a dramatic role into building a narrative of the collective, whether the content is about some kingdom from the past or the future on our own or some distant planet. What is most fascinating is the traditional presentation of the fight between good and evil, as the higher(moralistic) dimension in the spirit of the great world epics. Considering the above, well as the high degree of cultural expression, give me the right to believe that The Shadow of The Sun from Ivan Stojanovski will be an interesting and exiting read for our public and that this novel will give its own original contribution to a development of a sort of marginalized genre in Macedonian literature- epic and science fiction. It is my pleasure to recommend the writing Shadow of the Sun- an anachronic dramatic science fiction novel from Ivan Stojanovski for printing. Skopje, 08.25.2011 Reviewer Lidija Kapushevska-Drakulevska