The stories that Paul Filev has collected in this anthology of recent Macedonian fiction introduce English-language readers to a literature that has long been overlooked. Ranging from melancholy realism, such as Rumena Bužarovska’s “Lily,” to surreal fantasias, such as Tomislav Osmanli’s “Strained,” in which a stressed-out businessman eats his own computer, these texts provide a portrait of a country in constant transformation, still haunted by the Soviet past but quickly hurtling into the technocratic future. Comic and tragic, po-faced and hysterical, Contemporary Macedonian Fiction allows us to discover some of the most exciting young writers at work today.

The stories that Paul Filev has collected in this anthology of recent Macedonian fiction introduce English-language readers to a literature that has long been overlooked. Ranging from melancholy realism, such as Rumena Bužarovska’s “Lily,” to surreal fantasias, such as Tomislav Osmanli’s “Strained,” in which a stressed-out businessman eats his own computer, these texts provide a portrait of a country in constant transformation, still haunted by the Soviet past but quickly hurtling into the technocratic future. Comic and tragic, po-faced and hysterical, Contemporary Macedonian Fiction allows us to discover some of the most exciting young writers at work today.