North Macedonia - The Veil - Ivan Stojanovski

11th September 2025:

How I found the book:

I Googled "north Macedonian science fiction authors" and found The Veil by Ivan Stojanovski. The reason I chose North Macedonia, is because; a, it's not been ticked off yet and, b, because we adopted our dog from North Macedonia. I've said North Macedonia four times now which is quite a mouthful.

The Physical Book:

Clearly self published and probably using the cheapest possible options. The book looks like a text book as it's an A4 sized paperback with no decernable cover design. Again probably the cheapest option. There no publisher information, no copyright information, no blurb, no forward (don't read them very often anyway). Just an ISBN and then the book starts on Page 2. I guess this comes under physical attributes. But the book is riddled with spelling mistakes, grammatical errors. Weird and massively inconsistent uses of breaks, line spacing, indentations. Every page has at least one of these errors. This book has never been proof read by a native English person. I can only assume it was written in English as there isnt any credited with translation the work. And even a basic online translator wouldnt result in so many spelling errors!

I had to stop reading the book after 100 pages. The errors are so distracting and annoying I just couldnt get into a flow, despite many attempts. I'm not particularly good at spelling or the technical aspects of English writing. So there will be so much my basic knowledge didn't even spot. I will come back to the book just taking a break with a couple of other well written books before picking this up again.