Novel - 'Snow in Casablanca'

Another Macedonian novel ... in Macedonian

'Snow in Casablanca' receives 2006 award 'Novel of the Year'
Macedonian_News_Service : Message: Daily Bulletin: "'Snow in Casablanca' receives 2006 award 'Novel of the Year'

Skopje, March 15 (MIA) - Novel 'Snow in Casablanca' by Kica B. Kolbe, published by house 'Tri' has won 2006 literary award 'Novel of the Year' allocated by daily 'Utrinski Vesnik'.
'Snow in Casablanca' is a novel with a deep view into intimacy, but also critical openness towards the world. It is realistic and imaginary, a mosaic of memories and expectations. Kolbe's novel is another testimony about the destiny of the Macedonian refugee, who expresses her thoughts through work, assesses the selecting commission of 'Utrinski Vesnik'.
Kica B. Kolbe was born in Basino Selo in Macedonia in 1951, in a family of refugees from Aegean Macedonia. She studied philosophy at Skopje and Belgrade Universities. Kolbe has lived in Germany since 1986, working as writer-translator and artist. Her first novel 'Aegeans' (1999), which treats the topic of exile upon the example of her own family, had huge success abroad.
The formal presentation of the award will be held in Skopje's 'MPs Club' on March 28."

Stefani's Website

As a follow-up, below is Stefani Sen Senar's website which is in French and Macedonian. The novel, "Le Firman" is available at Amazon France.

Any Macedonian student who is taking French immersion might want to order this novel and produce a review in English. I would be happy to publish it.

Our Stefani is 50% French on her fathers side, 50% Macedonian on her mother's side and ... 100 % babe (as you can see ... because of her Macedonian side!)

Stefani Sen Senar (Website)
http://www.stefani-sen-senar.com/

BiblioMonde (Translated by Google)

Stefani SEN Senar
Novelist

Born in Dijon (France) in 1970, Stefani SEN Senar is of origin Macedonian by her mother, it grew in Parisian suburbs where it always lives in an old village, nested on a slope between the Seine and the forest of Sénart - the origin of its pseudonym. It studied the balkanology with the INALCO, in Paris, course a three years during which it was interested, in particular, at the period of the Othoman domination. Its many stays in republic of Macedonia since its youth and, in particular, those which it accomplished in 1991 and 1992, at the time of the bursting of the Yugoslav Federation and the access to independence of Macedonia was decisive for young auteure, old, then, 21 years which took part in the first newspaper independent Macedonian, Republika. In 2000, Stefani SEN Senar published a first novel with Skopje, Varvarski Koreni, (“cruel Roots”) (at AEA-Misla), then a second in 2004 Ferman (at Kultura). This novel is appeared in France in 2006 pennies the title the Decree.

“As of the exit of its first novel, of aucuns saw in this young novelist a “Francoise Sagan of Balkans”. This work brings much more than one surprised in our European literature: a certain hope.” (Predrag Matvejevitch)

Book Review: "Le Firman"

French language novel that has a Macedonian connection.

Stefani Sen Senar Nominated for Big European Award

(Vreme, 29.12.2006) - Novel “Le Firman” by French author of Macedonian descent Stefani Sen Senar has been nominated for big European award on European democratization “Newropeans” in category “Culture”.

The young French author, known to the Macedonian and French literary public through novels “Barbarian Roots” and “Le Firman”, is called the Francois Sagan of the Balkans. Author of the preface in “Ferman” is Predrag Matveevic.

“This novel refers to a topic entirely unknown in France. However, I touch upon a sensitive topic in it, such as the Islam, which is quite problematic in France, causing a certain silence initiated by the fear to talk about it”, says Senar.


The Future of Macedonia Described by the Owner of Mysterious Piece of Scroll Called Firman:
Monday, January 08, 2007

The more one knows , the more one suffers,- goes an old dictum that, I do not know why, I have embraced it as Serbian. Well, there probably will be consequences, but, after reading Firman by Stefani Sen Senar I have just learned yet few new things. At this moment I do not have a clue how ominous will this freshly acquired knowledge prove to be, but I will immediately spread it - to distribute as evenly as possible the potential collateral damage.
Stefani Sen Senar embarked on a story about centuries old magic upon which to support her intricate plot for her second novel related to Macedonia.

There is this scroll of devastating, magic power. Actually - this scroll is a firman (in Farsi) or ferman (in Turkish). It carries a royal order. She develops 'Firman' in series of flash backs and she uses and abuses the technique abundantly and at will. If Stefani read more of the legendary queen Scheherazade (Shahrazada) stories (you know that they were bundled into the Book of One Thousand and One Nights) she might have produced a remarkable piece of somewhat strange melange of literature.

" The Macedonian Tendency" - The Novel

(hopefully … to be a major motion picture)

Preface: Copywrite: David Edenden, 4th, Oct 2006

See website: The Macedonian Tendency : The Novel

This novel is a work in progress on the web. As I write this story, any links that might be of interest to the novel would be appreciated. I am especially interested in real individuals at work in the Balkans during the Thirties and Forties with information on the Web. Send your stories to the comment section of this blog. You don't have to have the exact details, just the mood and basic facts would be helpful. See my posts for an example of what I want. Blogs are a Good Way of Saving Family (and Macedonian) History.

My two favorite modern mystery authors are Robert Ludlum and John le Carre. Eric Ambler, who started writing in the Thirties, is also interesting to me because of his novels on the Balkans. His novel, The Schirmer Inheritance, which is set in Florina during the Greek Civil War, has some nice local color of ethnic Macedonian partisans.

The “Macedonian Tendency” was originally thought of as a name for a novel. I always liked the Robert Ludlum titles: The Bourne Identity, The Holcroft Covenant, The Osterman Weekend and The Chancellor Manuscript. The Macedonian Tendency seemed to fit right in and has a good ring to it.

Ludlum and le Carre are at opposite ends of the spectrum. With Ludlum, the reader is taken along on a vast thrilling roller coaster ride. Like some rides, you may want to close your eyes and skip a few pages because it won’t really matter. It is the process of reading the improbable plot that provides the entertainment.

My model for the novel, however, is John le Carre because of his ability to weave a probable story with complexity, double identities and double crosses. You can’t miss a page or you will be lost, like in a fog. I will foucs on the behavior of “outside forces” at work in the Balkans. Too many articles have been written with the view that most problems in the Balkans are the result of “ancient hatreds”. This is not true. Two people can always find an accommodation with each other, unless a third party is determined to sow discord: see Jean Paul Sartre’s “No Exit”.

These outsiders will have to distinguish between those who are pro-Communist vs. anti-Communist, pro-Greek vs. pro-Bulgarian vs. Macedonian nationalist. Sometimes, these people could be in the same family, sometime even within the same person

The main character is a naïve young woman, a recent Harvard University graduate, who has been recruited to work for the CIA, circa 1990, before the collapse of Yugoslavia. (I swear, I had this character already formed in my mind before I read about Lindsay Moran). She is intensely religious which means she believes in God and … the devil. Her first assignment is as a desk officer for Yugoslavia, specializing in (you guessed it) Macedonia. All the characters will be fictional but real people will make their appearance when she read newspaper accounts, CIA field reports and prepares classified documents for her superiors

She is not aware of it, but she has some secret family ties to the Balkans since her grandfather was parachuted into the Balkans during WW2 to help in the struggle against the Nazi’s and then against the communists (and Macedonians) during the Greek Civil War. Captain Evans, N. G. L. Hammond and Horace Lunt, will all make an appearance in some fashion.

A Macedonian partisan group in Greece will be working with American agents during WW2 and against them during the Greek Civil War. A few will eventually immigrate to the United States. There will be a Jewish partisan from Florina, who will also find himself in the US after the Greek civil war.

There will be betrayal, division, lies and despair. There will also solidarity, unity, truth and hope. It will be a lot like Macedonia and its history.

Macedonian Movie better than Da Vinci Code!

"The Secret Book", a film written by Jordan Plevnes, is Macedonia's entry to the Cannes film festival. I can't wait to see this movie. Fiachra has a good sense of humour. Like her, I smell a plot! I think she should look into the Greek film Ulysses' Gaze, by Theo Angelopoulos through the prism of Greek treatment of its Macedonian minority. We will find a real plot there!

Cannes, Cathars and Conspiracy

Fiachra Gibbons
Friday May 26, 2006
The Guardian

Purporting to rock Christendom and the Papacy to its white silk slippers, the Da Vinci Code opened the Cannes film festival last week and quickly became one of the fastest grossing films of all time. But has a hidden hand been at work here?

Why, you may wonder, with so much money at stake, did its producers take the risk of releasing it at the world's snootiest film festival, knowing it might suffer the critical mauling it got?

It may be because they knew that another film about the real heretical "bible" suppressed by the church for the past 1,000 years - a film begun before Dan Brown even set pen to paper -was finally about to be shown.

The Secret Book is the official Macedonian entry at Cannes. But you won't have read anything about it. Oh no. They have made sure of that. Call the Cannes press office and you will be told, as I was, "Quel film est ca? Mais il n'existe pas . . ." It may as well not, for its premiere was hidden away in a tiny screening room at the festival' fag end.

Coincidence or conspiracy? You decide. Brown's novel is based on the "discovery" of a set of highly disputed parchments called Les Dossiers Secret identifying members of a secret society, the Priory of Sion, allegedly descended from the Cathars. The Macedonian film is based on Le Livre Secret, a real mystical book written by the Bogomils, a Manichean cult whose ideas, carried back to France and Italy from the Balkans by returning crusaders in the 11th century, became the basis of the Cathar heresy. Like them, the Bogomils were massacred by the church and their name almost burned from history.

Two later copies of the Secret Book survive - one still hangs in punishment from the ceiling of the Museum of the Inquisition in Carcassonne - but the original written in Glagolic, the old Slavic script wiped out by the cyrillic alphabet imposed by the church, has never been found. Strangely, there is no mention of the book, or indeed of the Bogomils, in Brown's book.

Since it wrapped four years ago - a year before the Da Vinci Code was published - the Secret Book has been beset by obstacles. But Jordan Plevnes, one of three brothers who wrote the script (symbologists take note), is too much of a diplomat to suggest that the whole Da Vinci Code phenomenon is an elaborate smokescreen cooked up to obscure the light they shed on the Bogomils. He is after all, the Macedonian ambassador to France, one of the Balkans' leading playwrights, and his latest novel, the Eighth Wonder of the World, has won one of France's top literary prizes, the Silver Jasmine.

"But it does make you think," he confessed. "And yes, there is definitely a conspiracy at work - a conspiracy of blandness. There is a tyranny of banality now ruling the world; Hollywood and Dan Brown are part of that. This is our European story and we should be allowed to tell it ourselves."

So will we ever see Plevnes' film? That depends on a secretive, semi-masonic group, more powerful than any inquisitor, who decide in darkened rooms what films we get to see - the Distributors of the Priory of Soho.

So if you never hear of the Secret Book again, you will know that they, like Opus Dei and the mad monk Silas, have done their work.

The Secret Book's website is www.tajnatakniga.com.mk

More on the 'The Great Water'

Trajkov's 'The Great Water' receives viewers prize in Dubrovnik - Prague Daily Monitor:

(PDM staff with CTK) 23 June - 'The Great Water' from Czech director Ivo Trajkov has won the viewers' prize at an international film festival in Dubrovnik, producer Vladimir Chrenovsky told CTK.

Chrenovsky said the distribution premier of the film was to take place in New York on 17 June. The film has also been sold to Australia and New Zealand.

A co-production of the Czech Republic, Macedonia, Germany and the US, 'The Great Water' appeared in Czech cinemas this spring.

The film based on the Macedonian novel of the same name written by Zivko Cingo and published in the early 1970s at the peak of the Communist regime in the former Yugoslavia.

It shed light on the Stalinist period in Yugoslavia and the cruelty of the Communist leadership towards the children of the 'enemies of the revolution' in labour camps established after World War II.

It is a powerful and emotionally moving story of friendship and betrayal between two boys which explores conflicts between religion, spirituality and political blindness.

Trajkov is also one of the authors of the script.

Chrenovsky says that he would never again participate in a similar project.

'In Macedonia, no written agreements exist, everything is agreed upon verbally and everything looks accordingly. There are no film crews there capable of ensuring any service for shooting. The film was therefore a flying-by-the-seat-of-our-pants affair, he said.

Trajkov's first film, 'The Canary Connection' in 1993, passed unnoticed. Five years later, he made, in co-production with the World Circle Foundation, the film 'The Past', which won awards at many international film festivals."

Check this new Macedonian Novel

Macedonian Gold - The Novel by Dr. Michael Seraphinoff



"Most recently Dr. Seraphinoff has produced a fine work of fiction, his novel "Macedonian Gold".



"Macedonian Gold" is a fascinating fiction story that will captivate you and keep you reading to the end because you just can't wait to find out what happens next. It is a fantastic story, a mystery adventure tale that will guide you on a tour of Macedonia through its geography, history, culture and present-day society. While this journey of discovery includes tests of personal character in a quest of meaning in a fictionalized and at times fantastic Macedonia, it also visits the thorny real-life social issues of the day, including issues of ethnic and national rivalry and gender, racial and religious prejudice."