Little Novellas Sans Sugar by Olivera Kjorvezirovska offers 20 flash fictions in which the author, casting off on a literary adventure, freely partakes in the cultural tradition and ideas established by the small stories in I Am Old in Skopje. Assuming the cоmfortable position of a literary antipode delighting in the wide-ranging possibilities of interpretation, Kjorvezirovska sets off to create a multiplied reality which finds maybe its greatest expression in the piece entitled Heilderberg (never mute – always too loud), where the three-part structure of the text is directed by the changes in the literary procedures emblematic of the genres of confession and the travellogue, thus drawing a unique narrative framework through which the story is introduced into the action and acquires the status of a testimony. Unlike the impression that Kjorvezirovska is explicitly following the pattern of the prose works of her addressee, Martinovski in his tribute to Albahari remains consistent to the poetics that he nurtures in line with the principles of the hybrid literary structure of the haibun. The short prose works from his booklet Cat in the Mist draw attention to experiences that are born in the recesses of everyday life where the enthrallment with nature (composed in haiku form) meets the experiences of urban life (written in prose form). The strong emphasis on the urban is also present in the miniatures by Ivan Shopov, inspired by and united under the title 091 – Antipostcards from Skopje, where the central theme is the movement through the city and its spaces, which is experienced primarily through playing and (re)discovering. The American writer of flash fiction Lydia Davis, who is the winner of the 2013 Booker Prize , also finds her deserved place in this series. The title for the selection of flash fiction comes from the story-fragment: “I sit in the sun with my little friend on the stairs in front of the entrance: I am reading a book by Blanchot, she is licking her leg”, which best confirms the view taken of Davis by the literary critics as the writer’s writer, an author whose work demands an experienced and dedicated reader ready to make sacrifices (Ђурић Пауновић, 2014). Bojan Babic with his work Giraffes in the Catacombs is the third foreign author published in the Another Story imprint. His sixteen short prose texts focus the reader’s attention on the individual and his experience of the world depicted through the voice of the narrator who provides an analysis for a variety of situation and ideas. Rumena Buzharovska utilizes quite a different literary approach in the form of hypnography when shaping her flash fictions collected in Sleep. Playing with dreams as a potential spiritual experience for the reader following the coordinates of memorized events, lived experiences and the contents of the individual and collective unconsciousness, these prose texts leave room for the possibility to look into the aestheticization of dreams in literature, as well the status of the hypnographic literary text in the realm of flash fiction. The experimental work by Vladimir Lukash takes on an even more specific approach. His Radishani Preludes which, as he himself states, are not told in a verbal language, are representations of music notations of nine separate compositions: Back-Aching Waltz, Lullaby for Eli, Waltz for My Grandma, The Dream of the Feldman Turtle, Music for Lazy Sounds, Joke, Black Cat Shenanigans, A Small Walk in the Rain, Prelude for a Dreamy Typist. What is characteristic for this book concept is the search for the connection between literature and music, while a theoretical basis for the study of this relation can be found in the research conducted by Sofija Grandakovska on the representation of literary stories as visual narratives (Грандаковска, 2007). The postulates regarding the relation between the narrative and the visual when applied to Lukash’s work suggest the possibility for the literary phenomenon (in this case, flash fiction) to change the medium of its representation and thus announce the existence of a new work of art through the forms of a different art (music). This poses a question that belongs to a more specialized area of semiotics such as the semiotics of music, which boldly asks whether flash fiction stops being a literary form if it is turned into music, i.e. a short story-music, while at the same time imposes the debate whether and to what extent does a so-called short story-music violates the semantics of the category of a story in its well-known and established literary and theoretical context. Among the other stories, the short prose texts found in the collections Watching Intently by Irena Ristikj and Vela Luka Cabin, Under Vodno Mountain by Ognen Chemerski. Even though these writings first originated as Facebook posts, the fact that they were appropriated and published in this imprint allows for the possibility to re-examine the rhetorical conventions of the colloquial and para-literary discourse so characteristic of the current time that we live in. When attempting to provide legitimacy to these prose texts based on the degree of articulation of the poetic principle that they possess, we can see that they attest to the understanding of the short story as a literary discourse that best and most freely expresses a critical attitude towards reality and the centres of power. We can also view from this critical vantage point the Textile Poem by Pandalf Vulkanski, as well as the travel diary notes taken by Lidija Dimkovska and published as Beyond L. These prose texts which were born during her literary tour on the American continent (starting in New York, Baltimore and Washington and passing through Ashville, Iowa, Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, Oakland/San Francisco and ending in Los Angeles) throw light on reality in its most hidden nuances and smallest facts which comprise everyday life. Whether by accident or not, Dimkovska’s prose seem to follow closely Sartre’s instructions on keeping a diary. This is especially evident in the skillful avoidance of the pitfalls of keeping a diary such as exaggeration, over-analysis of oneself or embellishing truth (Сартр, 1966: 9). We end the overview of flash fiction works by Macedonian authors published in the Another Story imprint by higlighting the thirty or so flash stories by Vlada Uroshevikj collected under the title of Baroque Submarine. These texts can be viewed as a veritable gesture of interpretative revelation of reality, while at the same time finding their binding element in the insightful bringing together of seemingly incompatible things from everyday life into a harmonious mutual relation. This feeling of pleasure brought upon by surprise best describes the energy emanating from the Another Story imprint which continues and takes into a new direction the tradition of the short prose in our country, while at the same time serves as a serious inspiration and impetus for new theoretical examination of already established literary and cultural identities.
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