Zivko Cingo is one of the most distinguished and talented men of letters in modern Macedonian literature, the author of many significant short stories, novels, and plays. His works have been scrutinized by critics and literary theoreticians. In this attempt to evaluate his overall creative output from a literary and aesthetic perspective, the true dimensions of his opus will be established.

Cingo was born on 13 August 1935 in Velgosti, a village near Ohrid, southern Macedonia, to a working-class family. He completed elementary school in his native village and high school in Ohrid. He studied literature at the University of Skopje, graduating in 1959. He spent a year as an instructor at a teachers' school in Ohrid and then became a journalist and an editor for cultural programming at Radio and TV Skopje. He was an assistant at the Folklore Institute in Skopje and spent some time in specialization in Bulgaria...