# Venko Andonovski

Venko Andonovski is a Macedonian writer (novelist, short story writer, playwright, poet), essayist, critic and literary theorist.

## Biography

Venko Andonovski graduated from the Faculty of Philology "Blaze Koneski" in Skopje. He holds a PhD in Philology and works as a professor at the Faculty of Philology "Blaze Koneski" in Skopje. Andonovski is a member of the PEN center. In 1990 he became a member of the Writers' Association of Macedonia.

## Personal life

His brother Vedran Andonovski is a journalist and works for Voice of America in the United States.

## Creativity

* Poetry
** The gentle heart of the Barbarian
* Short stories
** Quarter of liricharite
** Frescoes and grotesques
* Novels
** Alphabet for the disobedient
** Navel of the World
** Witch
** Daughter of the mathematician / 33.33
* Dramas
** Doomsday machine
** Riot in a retirement home
** Slavic Chest
** Black dolls
** Candide in Wonderland
** Cunegonde in Carlaland
** Border
** Saint of Darkness
** Lead pillow
* Literary criticism
** Matoshe's bells
** The texts processes
** Structure of the Macedonian realistic novel
** Decryption

## Screenwriting

* Infernal Machine, TV Movie (1995)
* Vo svetot na bajkite, TV Series (1995)
* Upside Down (2007) (together with Igor Ivanov Izi)
* Prespav, TV Series (2016)

## Religion

In a 2008 interview for religious online portal Premin,
On journalist question:
Do you when creating your work have an ongoing "dialogue" with God in terms of person to a person or the dialogue goes down to silently standing before God and translating the experience (on a stand Absolute) in to this word?
Venko answered:
   I Always remember how it was when writing the "Navel of the World." Three and a half years I have sketched and collected material. I stored it up a lot, but everything was scattered in notebooks and computer files. That year, sometime in September, entirely without a plan, someone started sorting those scattered files. Like it was creating a mosaic. It woke me up at three, four o'clock in the morning and I was getting to work. I've never gotten up without an alarm clock. Finally, I decided to go in solitude. I went to Berovo. Before I moved in the bungalow that I've rented I lit a candle in the Church "Virgin Mary". Then, in the next twelve days, I lost sense of day and night. I woke up when I had to write down what someone obviously wanted me to. It was like someone dictated it to me. How I enjoyed it, I of course, write it down, but with great anxiety and thought. It was not just a monologue. I asked a question, which then I had to answer it. The novel was finished and I returned two days earlier to Skopje (than planned).
   I have enough years of experience to know that I did not write the novel myself, or just myself. Call it as you want - but I call it a blessing. Lord (I am a believer) You at least held my hand, if I did not deserved more - my mind and heart, for example. In this I was convinced, though I always speak about this experience with anxiety, from fear that people who do not believe in anything except themselves - will make fun of me.
   No great art comes without contact with the One and Indivisible, Almighty and Sublime. I do not only think it but also feel it the same.

## Awards

* (2006) award name: Balkanika for Navel of the World
* (2008) award name: Order of the Holy Macedonian Cross for: Contribution, support and promotion of the Macedonian national, cultural and spiritual identity, awarded by: Macedonian Orthodox Church - Ohrid Archbishopric
* (2013) award name: Stale Popov for Doter of the mathematician
* (2014) award name: Jugra for Navel of the World