NAKOVSKI’S LATEST NOVELS

NAKOVSKI’S LATEST NOVELS

KALINA

Seven years after I defended my master’s degree, Petre Nakovski wrote two more novels based on verified historical facts. The first novel entitled “KALINA” was written in the first person. This novel depicts the tragic testimony of a Macedonian girl, a fighter in the Democratic Army of Greece.

Kalina is an old Slavic name, still present in the Macedonian onomastic. The name “Kalina” is derived from the fruiting plant “Klink” (pomegranate) and symbolizes power, victory, perfection, immortality, resurrection, a gift of God, virginity, femininity, purity, harmony, hope, fertility, blood, wisdom, fidelity, life... The main character in the novel entitled “Kalina” is called Kalina. KALINA is a young village girl, forcibly mobilized by DAG and plunged into the whirlwind of the Greek Civil War. Kalina had to endure the horrors of war and tragically suffered a terrible defeat - she was captured and imprisoned. Her future was smouldering in police cells and concentration camps in the Aegean (Greek) islands. During the war she was required to carry out orders at the cost of her life. But in prisons and in the camps the only thing that was required of her was her signature of remorse; which for her was a sign of depersonalization. In her limited freedom living in her birthplace, Kalina was required to give up her name, language and birthplace... In the war it was easy, she only had to die once, but in the prison camps her torturers killed her every day and every night. Kalina struggled with death everywhere but, in all attempts to crush her spirit, she survived. She endured. Kalina endured the bad weather but she did not remain a prisoner of evil. She did not separate herself from the thought that the past must not perish in darkness of oblivion and that it should permanently be preserved in our personal and collective memory.

KALINA is a novel about the defense and preservation of dignity, name, honour and pride.

NA PATOT KON NEVRATOT (ON THE ROAD OF NO RETURN)

Nakovski’s last novel entitled “NA PATOT KON NEVRATOT” (ON THE ROAD OF NO RETURN) describes the fate of the Macedonian refugees in Poland after the tragic defeat of the communists in the Greek Civil War. The novel “Na patot kon nevratot” (On the road of no return) is the story of thousands of Macedonians who, after their defeat during the Greek Civil War, found themselves scattered in Eastern European countries - from the banks of the Oder River in the west of Poland to beyond the desert in Tashkent, Uzbekistan in the east. The drama of their eradication will continue there. Their doubt of whether they did well to enter the war and whether they did well to entrust their destiny to others, will continue to haunt them. Many questions will bother them, especially those about what was done during the war, about their losses, about the false promises, misconceptions, loneliness and great nostalgia for their homeland.

The attention the author gave in this novel is primarily focused and dedicated to the Macedonian refugees in Poland, where they eventually found peace. The author is a living witness of the events he described because he spent part of his childhood and youth in Poland and personally participated in those events. As refugees these Macedonians had a name and were able to slowly heal the wounds inflicted on them by bad times. They did not remain nameless and persistently and defiantly preserved their name, a name that belonged to their roots and national dignity - they remained what they were -Macedonians.

The novel “Na patot kon nevratot” (On the road of no return) is a novel about defeat, a novel about pain, bitterness, a lost homeland and faith in unfulfilled promises, about bitterness, doubt and defiance against all attempts at namelessness and persistence in defending and preserving the Macedonian name and the Macedonian national identity. The novel is about the grief people experienced longing for their place of birth, but also the desire, urge and aspiration to change their status with persistent effort, to study, to master professions, not to waste their lives empty and at someone else’s expense, to earn a living by working hard and to overcome it, especially since the environment was very different from that of the birthplace.

None of the Macedonian refugees ever lost the desire and hope that, one day, those who survived would gather around the family table, all together in their home. Even though their houses were ruined and desolate they had good dreams about them. Their great attachment to their homeland and desire to see their birthplace kept them going but time was against them. With time and age the lives of the old were slowly extinguished. The images of the past life they carried with them were sometimes passed on with words but, at the same time, their memories were taken with them and buried in cemeteries in

foreign countries. Those who come after them, as long as their memories lasted, the bloody cross of martyrdom and eradication continued to hang over them.

In spite of everything they experienced, the light from the beacon of hope remained in their hearts and souls, spiritual food and support for them in all their troubles.

Slavka and Done, who escorted thousands of children to communist countries, as well as a number of younger refugees, as refugees completed secondary and higher education. With their degrees and diplomas in hand, they embarked on the turbulent waters of life with wide open sails. Many of them educated themselves and became engineers, doctors, architects, economists, historians, teachers, professors, writers and many defended master’s and doctoral degrees. But, like their parents before them, on their way to their homeland they encountered a raised border ramp (they were unwelcome).

They forever remained on the road of no return, looking for new homelands...

THAT’S HOW IT WAS...

The most deserving person in the world for affirming Petre Nakovski’s work and for bringing light to the fate of the Macedonian people from the Aegean part of Macedonia (Northern Greece) is Mr. Risto Stefov from Canada, who, in his work, has translated many works of Macedonian literature into English thus opening up the Macedonian tragic story to a wider audience.