Book Category: short stories

“Expats” settled in the Balkans and Macedonians in exile cross paths in the weave of these stories, all of which revolve around moments of separation, discovery, or reunion with a place. Whether by choice or against their will, the characters in these short stories leave one land in search of another, hoping it will be more welcoming. Alas for them — but fortunately for us — that is not the case, and these displacements become the occasion for a sharp exploration, ranging from the hilarious to the tragic, of the personal and political consequences of these forced or imagined exiles.

A vase becomes the trigger for Lydia to explode in jealousy over her best friend’s life. Vesna, a university professor who tolerates her husband’s infidelities and her son’s indifference, finds herself taking part in a women’s empowerment event at the U.S. Ambassador’s residence. Ellie returns to her childhood home with the secret hope of reuniting with a former lover. No one is safe from Rumena Bužarovska’s intelligent, hyperrealistic, and incisive prose, which in this new collection of stories reveals the impossibility of finding happiness—both for those who have fled their country and for those who have stayed behind. It is an emotional atlas that dissects the lives of characters pushed to the limit, with literary mastery that makes us laugh, shudder, and reflect—all at once.  

“Few writers are as unabashed and ruthless as Rumena Bužarovska and even fewer occupy that narrow sliver of deeply funny and deeply sad with her panache. I love these bitter, wild characters and how her narratives spare no one and nothing.” —Catherine Lacey, author of Pew and Nobody Is Ever Missing

“Rumena Bužarovska belongs to a new generation of women writers who have emerged from the ‘Yugosphere’—one of the most apt neologisms for Yugoslavia since its collapse. Young women writers began coming forward after the war, whose memory of ex-Yugoslavia had either been erased or co-opted by the new ‘national’ schools, or too foggy to have much to remember, except to know that such memories did, in fact, exist. Bužarovska is an exceptionally talented, modern, educated storyteller who has grown up under the influence of the American short story. Her writing is unusually legible and seductive, even when the theme is dark. Bužarovska could be Annie Ernaux’s granddaughter, spurred by internal resolve to be something, although what she wants to be is something she already successfully is.” —Dubravka Ugrešić, author of The Age of Skin and Fox

“If you haven’t read Bužarovska, you are missing out.” —Halimah Marcus, Electric Literature

“No subject is taboo for Bužarovska.” —L’Obs

A talentless poet, a gynecologist who wants to an artist, an oppressive father, an impotent partner, a dead man, a meek ambassador… And their wives. Eleven narrators who become the hidden camera of their marriages, reflecting with ruthless irony on their husbands, on themselves, and on the questionable decision they made to wait until death do them part.

With devastating psychological precision, Bužarovska unearths the grotesque in the everyday and shines a stroboscopic light on the mysteries of life as a couple. Self-deception, vanity, hypocrisy, dreams and hopes, apathy and defeats shape and deform complex relationships that reveal the most hilarious and terrible aspects of gender roles and their social impact.

Bužarovska dissects who we are and who we want to be in a first-person analysis of married life that ventures between the boundaries of parody and tragedy.

Selected by Livres Hebdo as a Must-Read Book of 2022

Recommended by Elke Heidenreich in Der Spiegel

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“The Macedonian writer, born in 1981, shatters pretenses with a sense of humor that spares not a single character. With an acid pen, she depicts situations that are pathetic, at times even tragic, to allow laughter to open the way to liberation.” — Le Monde

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“This Macedonian writer has a sharp tongue. If the men are stupid and vain, unfaithful and chauvinist, the women are naïve, replete with their own weaknesses. Rumena Bužarovska plays on the blurred, shifting ground of relationships, the slippery moments that give rise to fantasy, or to those, especially uncomfortable, that trigger doubt, regret, and feelings of frustration.” — Lire

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“[Her] prose is rhythmic, with a sharp sense of theater and cinematic montage … leaving space for things left unsaid, for semblances, for the materiality of the flesh, for romantic failure, for burlesque.” —Philippe Petit, Marianne

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“Bužarovska’s literary strength lies in the weaknesses of her characters . . . whose words are never what they think, whose thoughts are never what they feel . . . [in] an eternal struggle for attention and recognition that is never satisfied nor ever granted to another soul. In the end, both men and women receive their just deserts by reason of their emotional ineptitude and emotional sloppiness. [But] Bužarovska is never cynical, for between the lines she reveals the battles that everyone is forced to wage within themselves.” — Falter

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“Carnage, yes, but of the most hilarious variety.” — L’Express

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“In the eleven stories that make up My Husband, the institution of marriage is at the center of each petty cruelty, each profound disappointment, each quietly cutting comment and abrasive fight… Bužarovska points out a key, constraining fact with which every woman is intimately familiar: patriarchy breeds cruelty… It makes sense that Bužarovska was largely responsible for pioneering the Macedonian version of the #MeToo hashtag. Who else would be bold enough to take on the institution—the system—of marriage?” — Eva Dunsky, Los Angeles Review

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“[A writer of] formidable intelligence, cruelty, and talent for the tragicomic.” — Astrid De Larminat, Le Figaro

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“[Her] stories treat the abysmal with defiant comedy.” — Die Welt

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“Nobody does it like Bužarovska—her short stories depict the social paralysis of post-transition North Macedonia with precision and simplicity so rarely found in contemporary post-Yugoslav literature. Her characters are stuck inside their own logic—even those who have managed to leave the Balkans physically, are never truly free of its influence. The humor is found in their unawareness of the petty patterns their lives follow, but the author is not a judge here, only a master observer of her own society. This collection is a true literary gem.” — Lana Bastašić, Electric Literature

The collection presents episodes from the lives of women of various ages, offering intimate glimpses into their inner worlds while subtly exposing underlying power dynamics. Whether depicting peer pressure, a strained marriage, a traumatic gynecological visit, or the erasure of self beneath a mother-in-law’s roof, each story unfolds as a tense drama hurtling toward catastrophe. Bužarovska’s characters, rendered with simple yet masterful strokes, are deeply human and striking in their fragility.

Out of print 

Scribbles is Buzarovska’s debut collection, marking her successful mastery of the short story form and introducing themes she continues to explore in her later works: the status of women in society, the complexity of family relationships, the Balkan region’s sense of inferiority toward the West, and a sharp critique of patriarchy.

Although the collection is no longer in print, several of the original stories are included in the latest edition of Wisdom Tooth.