The Slavko Janevski Foundation announced today that “The Dog With Sad Look”, the latest novel of Olivera Nikolova, is a winner of the “Novel Of The Year” for 2019. This is the second time that Nikolova is awarded this highly acclaimed prize, after 2004 when she received it for “Rositsa’s Dolls”. For 18 years now this prize has been awarded by the daily newspaper “Utrinski vesnik”.
The explanation by the jury says: “The Dog With Sad Look” published by Matica makedonska is a novel whose story is based on historic facts delicately intertwined with the fiction. The direct, explicit pointing out towards the source (“My Balkan Journal”, a memoir book by J.Johnston Abraham, one of the doctors staying in Skopje during World War II), whose “echo” is the novel, does not at all obstruct the story, on the contrary - it enables an insight into the layeredness and the complexity of the narrative procedures.
“The writing of Nikolova is powerful, authentic and refined. In this novel she demonstrates again a subtle sense for details enriching the narrative mosaic, subtly weaving a net of symbols. The bold author’s idea is successfully materialized into a creative work of high aesthetic values. The author skillfully leads the story towards the very end, maintaining the compactness of the structure, the convincing characters and literary situations, as well as the stylistic-linguistic refinement” is stated in the decision of the jury.