Luan Arif Starova (Macedonian: Луан Ариф Старова; 14 August 1941 – 24 February 2022) was an Albanian writer who lived in North Macedonia.
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.
[3] When working for his doctoral degree in French and comparative literature[2] (awarded 1978), he spent some time at Sorbonne, collecting materials on the collaboration of Apollinaire and the Albanian scholar and writer Faik Konitza.
[3] Several of Starova's novels published since 1992[3] form the so-called "Balkan Saga", in which he explored the lives of 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.
[5] Luan Starova was a translator of French literary works (e.g., poetry by André Frénaud (fr)) into both Albanian and Macedonian.
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.
[12] 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 (possibly under an English title Pyramid of Water).