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Homunculus is a collection of sixteen 'fairy tales for adults' with something for every reader. The author has largely retained the classical fairy-tale structure with its elements of surprise and the constant intertwining of the real and unreal, but he transcends the sugarsweet endings we are familiar with.
Along with typical fairy-tale features like the interplay of humans and animals, he presents us with a wide range of more mature themes - the erotic, the tragic, the absurd - set amidst dichotomies on an adult wavelength: mythical vs. urban, banality vs. wisdom, as well as issues of guilt and longing.
Some of the stories are related to existing internationally known fairy tales such as 'Tom Thumb', where the main character struggles with an oedipal bond with his mother, or 'The Huntsman', told from the perspective of the hunter sent out to kill Snow White. Others go back to Macedonian folk roots or have been freely composed by Prokopiev himself, but all of them are rendered with humour, skill and a noticeable love of life.
About the author
Aleksandar Prokopiev graduated from the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philology, General and Comparative literature department, and finished his postgraduate education in Belgrade and at the Sorbonne. He has published 13 books of stories and essays, as well as a novella,
The Peeper. He has worked as a editor of several magazines, and was a member of the editorial board of
Orient Express and
World Haiku, and presently for
POEM Magazine. He has written screenplays for film, theater, TV shows, radio dramas, and comic books, and his works have been translated into many languages. Prokopiev is also the Artistic Director of the Pro-Za Balkan International Festival of Literature, Skopje, Macedonia.
Will Firth is one of the leading translators from Russian, Serbo-Croat, and Macedonian into English, and is accredited as a translator with NAATI (the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters, Australia). His translations include Spahic's
Hansen's Children; Nikolaidis'
The Coming and
The Son; Perisic's
Our Man in Iraq and
Ekaterini; and Gatalica's
The Great War.
Summary
Fairytales for adults: erotic, tragic, sometimes absurd and often very funny
