‘The scenes are described with extreme particularity. They are presented in a wondrously picturesque, relief-like fashion and with fierce truthfulness. But Pavlovski maintains something else – his emigrants sometimes return home to either stay or leave again. Then their drama is twofold. They are no longer accepted by their own environment and they feel hurt. How can banishment on the wings of exile make any sense? Is it at all possible to preserve one’s own identity? Should they assimilate in order to resemble the way they once were, and if not, what should they change into? A disturbing stream of feelings runs throughout this book which, without any doubt, belongs to the group of most beautiful and exciting works.’

Alain Bosquet, Le Monde, Paris

‘Palovski is our Steinbeck from the Balkans. Disturbed about the fate of the small individual, he presents us with an exceptional novel. The reader from the west develops a feeling of sorrow, the truth is so terrifying that it makes the fiction even more powerful. Thanks to Pavlovski, the emigrant workers enter our literature and our conscience. A beautiful stone is thrown to shake our indifference and disturb our conscience. Here the artistic truth is so strong that it fascinates. Home is Where the This is a novel with a polyphonic meaning.’

Gilles Costaz, Le Matin, Paris

‘This novelistic story is full of adventures and conflicts, love, gatherings and surprises, and is based on long observation and true experiences. Pavlovski can be called a writer of migrations.
This is a piece of work inexhaustible in its trust, wealth, and internal and external values within the multitude of its characters. It exhibits a strange world in which the disappearance of a group of people is prophesied in order to put an end to their troubles. But this reflection, which is fiercely stalking our epoch, becomes the supporting framework in Pavlovski’s novel.’

Pierre Gamarra, La Vie Ouvriere, Paris

‘With his beautiful book Bozin Pavlovski invites you on an adventure for the sake of getting acquainted. His characters suffer much more because they are in exile rather than from the exploitation in which they are being treated like pawns in a game of chess. And they actually do not complain, even when they become lucid.
For a person to become rich – this is a chimera which has very serious consequences. Here, in filigree-like fashion, is expressed an always-present wish: let the day come when the homeland, in the old sense of the word and the way it is still used in the Balkans, offer sufficient reason for everyone to discover their happiness within themselves and their home. This novel is arouses the wish for other novels by Pavlovski, an author with a great future.’

Lucien Curzu, L’ Humanite, Paris

‘Powerful and truthful novel about the way in which life transforms from terrible unpredictability into a real event. The heroes are workers with education who suffer from mocking evils – rheumatism and homesickness – and they go out of their minds when letters from home are belated. Nonetheless, they are the heroes of their devastated lives, of their everlasting persistence, their dreams and their strength, which is being drained by their work. Pavlovski does not like to “preach” to his readers. He writes as an artist full of great excitement and certainty. His words are full of meaning and warmth – they breathe life.’

Yann Queffelec, Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris

Bozin Pavlovski: Transcultural dialogue, aesthetic foundation

Pavlovski’s novel reflects the complex identity crises an individual faces in his or her dealings with the clash of civilizations taking place in the modern world.
Bozin Pavlovski’s novels, particularly those he has written since he has adopted Australia as his second homeland, unveil the phenomena of reterritorialized cultures, and describe the meetings, conversations and thoughts of two and sometimes more cultures, communities and languages which exist in a single space.
Pavlovski’s novels can be said to be a part of a transnational literature which has an increasing importance in a contemporary world whose significant characteristics are those of dislocation and relocation, and from where stems his writing between histories, geographies and cultural practices.

Taki Fiti,
President of Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts

‘Literature, aside from being the keeper of life and beauty, has the function of being a movable grave, as in this wonderful novel by Bozin Pavlovski, not only because it moves graves like Shakespeare’s forest, but also because in itself, as in a real grave, it conveys all that has happened and all that could have happened, together with forgotten history, traditions, old tales and myths, through memories and, what is most important, through the dead’.
This novel should be read in one breath. Certainly the oceans that flow to Australia, Pavlovski’s new homeland, have enriched his writing craft to help it reach its fullest maturity.’

Mitko Madzunkov, Sintezi

‘... With this beautiful book Bozin Pavlovski invites you on an adventure for the sake of getting acquainted. His characters suffer much more because they are in exile rather than from the exploitation in which they are being treated like pawns in a game of chess. And they actually do not complain even when they become lucid ...’

Le Matin, Paris

“How can banishment on the wings of exile make any sense? Is it at all possible to preserve one’s own identity? Should one assimilate in order to resemble the way one once was, and if not, what should one change into? A disturbing stream of feelings runs throughout this book which, without any doubt, belongs to the group of most beautiful and exciting works.”

Alain Bosquet, Le Monde, Paris

‘A powerful and truthful novel about the way in which life transforms from terrible unpredictability into a real event. Pavlovski does not like to preach to his readers. He writes as an artist full of great excitement and certainty. The words written by his hand are full of meaning and warmth – they breathe life.’

Yann Queffelec, Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris

‘Bozin Pavlovski is our Steinbeck from the Balkans. Disturbed about the fate of the small individual, he presents us with an exceptional novel. The reader from the West develops a feeling of sorrow, the truth is so terrifying that it makes the fiction even more powerful. Thanks to Pavlovski, the emigrant workers enter our literature and our conscience. A beautiful stone is thrown to shake our indifference and disturb our conscience. Here the artistic truth is so strong that it fascinates. This is a novel with a polyphonic meaning.’

Gilles Costaz, Le Matin, Paris

‘This true novelistic story is full of adventures and conflicts, love, gatherings and surprises, and is based on long observation and true experiences. Pavlovski can be called a writer of migrations. This is a piece of work inexhaustible in its trust, wealth, and internal and external values in the multitude of its characters. It exhibits a strange world in which the disappearance of a group of people is prophesied in order to put an end to their troubles. But this reflection which is fiercely stalking our epoch becomes the supporting framework in Pavlovski’s novel.’

Pierre Gamarra, La Vie Ouvriere, Paris

Bozin Pavlovski (Australian, Macedonian) is one of the key names of contemporary and modern European literature. A writer with remarkable achievements, with a clear stylistic and powerful narrative identity, he, starting from his novel West Aust, The Red Hypocrite, Neighbouring the Owl, Return to Fairy Tales, Eagle Coat of Arms, A Novel for My Departure, Dreaming on the Road, The Milk of Human Kindness, The Beauty and the Marauder, Call Me Bye, The Agony, Winter in Summer, Journey with My Beloved, The Horn of Love, Gardener, Desert, has achieved an imposing opus. As such, we can freely account for it as one of the basic, remarkable projects in our literature, which in the second half of the past century was being freed from the traditional beat space in a lighting fast fashion, broadly branching out and accepting the new. In that manner it took huge steps and adjusted naturally, as its organic part, in the rich Yugoslavian and European literary space. Of course, with the high narrative standards, by the powerful stylistic suggestion and the universality of the narrative contents on a level of general human and fatal drama of the existence under the celestial stars. With what is, in other words, the main topic of literature in general, that, as Ernesto Sabato says, represents "the most complete and deepest form of research of the condition of man in the world". Naturally, here, the Argentinean novelist, above all, thinks of the novel which meticulously achieves its goal in the XiX and XX century as an analyst and mirror of man thrown into existence.
The entire rich novelistic opus of Bozin Pavlovski, namely, represents such a suggestive testimony to man in our time, if we paraphrase Lermontov, on his confusion and the temptations within him, which, as a result of the general entropy of moral and ethic values, mostly lead to the abyss of personal downfall and blending into the social poverty and anthropological grayness ruling everything around him.
This typical image of the alienated man for our society is the foundation on which, without exception, all of Bozin Pavlovski's novels are composed: from the first one Miladin from China to the, thus far, last one Winter in Summer. It is magnificenlly thematically set up and analytically developed. This is also the case in Neighbouring the Owl (1987), the fifth novel from this writer. In it the image might be given in it most brutal, veristic kind, seen through the most sharpened diagnostic dioptry. As such, this novel with its thematic complex adds to The Red Hypocrite (1984), which precedes it and which first, with a merciless and precise vivisection, opens the theme of hypocrisy in a our society in the eighties of the last century, when we lived the last years of the communist system, prior to its complete decay and departure into the archives of history, which only re-repeats itself and cynically toys with man.

Efiim Kletnikov

“The success of the novel should be sought in the talent of Bozin Pavlovski as a writer who so minutely shapes and builds a heroes, to discover a Pechorin of our times, creating a novelistic structure which pictures the life, more precisely, our contemporary life with all its dramatic and controversial phenomena.”

‘Our literature openly enters into a critical dialogue with our society and times, raising the dramatic questions in literature about the presence and future of that society, or more precisely, those convulsive and traumatic questions which exist in ourselves. Where are we in society and where is society in ourselves?’

Berliner Zeitung, Berlin

‘The already known features and qualities of the novels of Bozin Pavlovski have also been proved in this book which is characterized by a complex, rich and compact plot, vividly created characters, a narrative mastery, the receptivity of dramatic tensions, the tenseness of narration and by felicitous modern narrative procedures. Bravely touching our sensitive social and moral crosswords, Pavlovski brings before us a prose which is humanely engaged, challenging and full of meanings which elicit deep emotions.’

Magasine Lir, Paris