Luan Starova is a novelist, poet, scholar, diplomat, and literary translator. An Albanian from the Republic of Macedonia who writes in both the Albanian and Macedonian languages, he has served as the Republic of Macedonia's ambassador to France, Spain, and Portugal, and was formerly professor of French at the University of Skopje. His books have been translated into many languages. Christina E. Kramer is professor of Slavic and Balkan languages and linguistics at the University of Toronto. She is the author of the language textbook Macedonian and co-translator of the novel Bai Ganyo: Incredible Tales of a Modern Bulgarian, both published by the University of Wisconsin Press.

• Translator's Note   Part One 1 My Father, Our Family, the Books     Love     The Fate of the Books     Differences     The Garden     The Fountain     The Balcony     The Cabinet     Identity     The Life of the Books     The Death of the Manuscript     A Secret     Learning about the Deities     My Father's Fatherlands     My Father's Languages     My Father's Dictionaries     The Radio     Old Age 2 The Books and My Father's Friends     Eastern Dream and Western Dream     Friends     Autodidacts     Libraries     A Boarder in Babel     Language Quarrels     Balkan Babel     A Choice     Sacrifice for Books     The End of Time     The Books in One's Life 3 Father's Books, Migrations, Stalinism, the Balkan Wall     The Spyglass     The Globe     The Family Clock     Travel     The Bomb     Flags     The Mother Tongue     The Holy Books     Dreams of a Lost Time     The Power of Languages     Rakija and Meze     The Taste of the Dough     Holiday Tikush     Stalin's Portrait     Shock Workers     The Silver Mirror     The Medal     Holiday     Ration Books     A Coin in the Trevi Fountain     La Rinascente     The Balkan Wall     Prayer     Tears   Part Two 1 The Margins of My Father's Books: The Constantinople Dream, In Search of Lost Time     The Third Exit     The True Path     At a Crossroads in the Labyrinth     Between Constantinople Heaven and Balkan Hell     Mission     The Game of Defeat and Victory     Janissary Fate     The Key of Destiny     The Waves of Illusions     The Debt to Time     Between East and West     The Dream of the Sea     Holidays in Defeats     Lost     Tattered Fate     Bartering with Fate     The Dream of the Books     The Eastern Sword of Damocles     The Fedora 2 Time Discovered     Documents I     Documents II     Documents III     The Meaning of the Silence     The Documents (Epilogue) Perhaps the Real Ending     A Borrowed Book