Macedonia

Macedonia News Post: Found in Translation: Local Publisher Brings Alive the Story of a Somali Olympian and Refugee for Macedonian Readers by Filip Stojanovski

This article shares the story of the publishing of the translations of the graphic novel biography of Somali Olympic runner Samia Yusuf Omar, An Olympic Dream – The Story of Samia Yusuf Omar written by German illustrator Reinhard Kleist, into the Macedonian and Albanian languages. Jovan Bitoljanu, the co-owner of Bunker Comics Bookshop in Skopje, the capital and largest city in the Republic of Macedonia, selected this title as one of their first publications since opening the shop in 2011.

The article discussed the overall positive reception to the comic despite concerns expressed by nationalists that the story focuses on a refugee and that it was translated into Albanian in addition to the official language, Macedonian.

The article included links to the Wikipedia article about Samia Yusuf Omar, which shared the triumphant and tragic story of this Olympic athlete. The remaining links in the article were to other global voices stories about the original publication of the graphic novel in German and the “xenophobic and Islamophobic campaign” by Macedonian nationalists leading up to the October 2017 election. These assisted in providing context to explain why this graphic novel is important at this time.