Before us is the extraordinary book of short stories SHAKEN WORLD by Irena Jurcheva. Very giftedly, lavishly, with “gloom beauty” as Blazhe Koneski says, borrowing the phrase from Grigor Prlichev, in a Kafkian atmosphere, Irena Jurcheva arranges her diary short-story entries about today’s life of writers and translators and the heartlessness of the new world whose basic urge is opposite of the artistic pursuits of the past.
The book is divided into two parts: the first part called WORLD WITH LAST FORCES, which includes the great stories: The Early Awakening Man Not Losing Hope, The Translator and His Payer, Light and Dust, The Fate of the Fallen Leaves, Encounter with the Sharp Piece of Soul, Youthful Wave in the Autumn of Life, I See Them from Above with a Blissful Smile and Nightmare of Dreams and the second part entitled WORLD BEFORE DEMOLITION with the extraordinary stories-records: Bo Yun Duruk, Childless and Loveless, The Silent Ones. The Forest. The Room., Lucaterka and Papucadia, Aurelia’s Shaken World from a Bird Perspective, The Storyteller and the Pearls, and The Diary of Awakened Nightmares.
All short stories-records are narrated/written in the first person by the clergyman Irinej: “You will ask me what my profession is… but the word profession is a strange miracle to me because it does not have one meaning only. A single profession of yours should include as much knowledge and skills as possible, and you want to cover it all with just one word. Profession is usually what your landowners and soul owners are looking for in order for you to earn your living… I am a passer-by on your land and I do not knock for you to open, but I come by invitation… My name is Storyteller. I stay in the corners, behind the curtains, I peek through the doors and through the windows… I am loner, I am not crazy …”
Extremely witty portrayal of the narrator and a well-crafted petrification of the reality we live in. The reality of the storyteller Irinej (male form of the author’s name!) is full of extraordinary stories from his fantastic world that is constantly on the verge of dream and reality. At the same time, Jurcheva very skilfully, and modestly to the extreme brevity, shows her vast knowledge of English, American and Macedonian studies. The Macedonian language is both rich and pure, syntactically precise, lexically sustained with numerous beautiful deviations both on a grammatical and logical level making up the prose literariness, i.e. what makes this prose high art. Her book simply captivates with its beauty and charm so that you cannot but immerse yourself in reading what has been said and learn the wisdom offered.