Petar Andonovski was bornin 1987, in Kumanovo, NorthMacedonia. He studied general andcomparative literature at the Facultyof Philology, at the University ofCyril and Methodius in Skopje. Hehas published one poetry collectionand three novels. In 2015 his novelThe Body One Must Live In wonthe national award for Novel of theYear. Fear of Barbarians receivedthe 2020 European Union Prize forLiterature.

Translated by Christina E. KramerGavdos: a remote island south of Crete, the southernmost point of Europe, surrounded by an endless expanse of sea.To Oksana, who has come from Ukraine with her friends to recover from illness in the aftermath of Chernobyl, it seems like a dream to live in a blue-and-white house with a lemon tree.To Penelope, a Greek woman who was married off to an unsuitable man by nuns from the convent where she spent her teenage years, it is a kind of prison.Their two narratives, interwoven with other stories – of the other women of the sparse community, of their own past lives and loves – are skilfully combined with themes of otherness and the notions of ‘foreign’ and ‘barbaric’ in this poetic and timely short novel by acclaimed Macedonian writer Petar Andonovski, winner of theEuropean Union Prize for Literature.

Petar Andonovski was bornin 1987, in Kumanovo, NorthMacedonia. He studied general andcomparative literature at the Facultyof Philology, at the University ofCyril and Methodius in Skopje. Hehas published one poetry collectionand three novels. In 2015 his novelThe Body One Must Live In wonthe national award for Novel of theYear. Fear of Barbarians receivedthe 2020 European Union Prize forLiterature.

Translated by Christina E. KramerGavdos: a remote island south of Crete, the southernmost point of Europe, surrounded by an endless expanse of sea.To Oksana, who has come from Ukraine with her friends to recover from illness in the aftermath of Chernobyl, it seems like a dream to live in a blue-and-white house with a lemon tree.To Penelope, a Greek woman who was married off to an unsuitable man by nuns from the convent where she spent her teenage years, it is a kind of prison.Their two narratives, interwoven with other stories – of the other women of the sparse community, of their own past lives and loves – are skilfully combined with themes of otherness and the notions of ‘foreign’ and ‘barbaric’ in this poetic and timely short novel by acclaimed Macedonian writer Petar Andonovski, winner of theEuropean Union Prize for Literature.