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 newest novel by Olivera Nikolova - “The Dog With Sad Look” is magnificently faithful to her model of novels based on “preparation”, research, submission of a seemingly ordinary sheet of paper which, inherently, in its own facts opens up as an entire ficticious literary city, like in those picture books whose pages turn into castles or other three dimensional miracles. Only seemingly as any other, “The Dog With Sad Look” is exactly that kind of ficticious city emerging from the sheet of paper put inside “My Balcan Diaries” by Dr. J.Johnston Abraham. Nikolova does not try to conceal this memoire book, on the contrary, she begins her novel with it, expressing her gratitude to her author and naming her entire novel only as an echo of his memories.

Olivera Kjorveziroska