Luan Starova


Luan Arif Starova is an Albanian writer who lives in North Macedonia. He has published his works both in Albanian and in Macedonian; he is said to usually first write his texts in Macedonian, and later translate them into Albanian.

Biography

Luan Starova was born in Pogradec, an Albanian town on Lake Ohrid, in 1941.
His family had legal and scholarly background: his grandfather on the father's side had served as an Ottoman qadi in Prilep, before retiring and emigrating to Turkey; his father earned a law degree in Istanbul, and was a lawyer and a scholar. In 1943, when Luan was a small child, his family moved to Struga, then annexed by Albania, at the opposite end of Lake Ohrid from Pogradec, and after the WWII, they moved to Skopje, the capital of the new SR Macedonia.
He grew up in Tito's Yugoslavia, and studied French language and literature at Skopje University. After graduation, he worked as a journalist, becoming in 1968 the editor of Albanian programming on Television Skopje. However, in the same year he left for Zagreb to start his postgraduate studies Zagreb University. He earned a master's degree with a thesis on The Balkans in the Prose of Guillaume Apollinaire. When working for his doctoral degree in French and comparative literature, he spent some time at Sorbonne, collecting materials on the collaboration of Apollinaire and the Albanian scholar and writer Faik Konitza. Later, he was to edit a book about these two writers.
Starova worked as a professor of French literature at Skopje University,
eventually serving as the chair of the Department of Romance Languages and Literature.
Since 1985, Starova also worked on a number of diplomatic posts in various European and Arab countries.
After Republic of Macedonia became an independent state, Luan Starova was appointed as his country's first ambassador to France ; later he also served as the ambassador to Spain and Portugal.
Luan Starova started writing novels in 1971.
Several of Luan Starova's novels published since 1992
form the so-called "Balkan Saga", where he explores the destinies of the people on both sides of the Albania-Macedonia border under three "Empires" - the Ottoman, the Fascist, and the Stalinist - through the story of his family.
Luan Starova is also known as a translator of French literary works into both Albanian and Macedonian.
Since 1972, Luan Starova participated in the organization of the annual Struga Poetry Evenings.
In 2017 he was awarded the French legion of honor, rank officer.

Family

Luan Starova's father, Arif Starova, who in his youth earned a law degree in Istanbul, worked as a lawyer in both Albania and Yugoslavia. An ardent bibliophile and amateur historian, he joined the staff of the National History Institute in Skopje, where he was able to use his knowledge of Ottoman Turkish to translate Ottoman-era documents.
After his retirement, he continued as an independent researcher. He put much effort into deciphering, studying, and translating records of the Bitola qadi's court from the 15th through 19th centuries. The theme of "my Father's books" often appears in Luan Starova's work. Luan Starova's older brother, Vulnet Starova, was a doctor and politician. He served as the Speaker of the People's Assembly of Macedonia in 1986–1991.

Works

Two of Luan Starova's novels from the Balkan Saga cycle have been published in English translation, translated by Christina E. Kramer. In 2014, she was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant to fund her work on translating another novel from this cycle, The Path of the Eels. This was the first time ever a NEA grant was awarded to support a translation from Macedonian to English.