Viewing posts from: book

17.01.2012.

THE WORLD THAT LOST ITS COMPASS

Edo Popović: Breaking The Wind (OceanMore, Zagreb, 2011)

By: Leda Sutlović

Some of the recently published books, which can be categorised as socially active prose, aim to remind us of the unenviable social situation, alongside all the devastating statistics, spiritual, moral and other crises. One of these novels is Edo Popović’s  Breaking The Wind. Almost a dystopian but definitely a futuristic transition story that speaks critically of the present-day life and shows its extreme in the future. The novel’s title stands as a metaphor to the greed of the capitalist society which, after another successful acquisition, announces the breaking of the wind.      more >

26.12.2011.

THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL

Mirjana Novaković: Tito has Died (Laguna, Belgrade, 2011)

By: Lamija Neimarlija

The main character in Mirjana Novaković’s thriller ‘’Tito has Died’’ (Laguna, 2011) is a dissident alcoholic, a well know journalist of a newspaper Politika, during the previous regime and a marginalised reporter in today’s capitalist Serbia. The novel begins with our hero/storyteller’s unexpected conversation with a communist Nikola Babić, in which she finds out that one number of Politika from 1968, published a very unusual article, in which, the first capital letter of each paragraph reads ‘’Tito has Died’’. The text tells of a theatre play that will start on May 4 at 3.05 p.m. The death of Tito – the great event of the Yugoslavian history – is not the only mystery in this crime story. The tragic death of one of the most perspective members of the Democratic party, Saša Vrtača, is a mystery of a great importance to the Serbian authority and its nation.

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26.12.2011.

GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL

Olja Savičević Ivančević: Goodbye Cowboy (Algoritam, Zagreb, 2010)

By: Nikola Đoković

The tile of the novel ‘’Goodbye Cowboy’’ hints at the sentimental, nostalgic and even bitter-sweet taste. The ecstatic-ethical dominance in the novel corresponds with a longing for the old idealised, ‘’not-for-sale’’ (western) type of hero in today’s civilisation. The absence of this figure in the ‘’West’’ that presented Hollywood, the mythical workshop (that spread the myth of a hero of the time past to the rest of the world through its movie icons), as well as in Croatia, that presents the East in ‘’transition’’ in comparison to the ‘’developed’’ West.

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20.12.2011.

FORCING THE ABSURD

David Albahari: The Checkpoint (Stubovi kulture, Belgrade, 2011)

By:  Ivan Telebar

In his latest novel, The Checkpoint, David Albahari decided on a war topic set in an unusual and at the same time, purposeless story of the pointlessness of dying on the battlefield. In his attempt to shock, the author managed to achieve exactly the opposite. The one thing that will astonish the reader is the blurriness of the storytelling discourse with gaps that dominate the obvious plot and the hypothetical point of the text. The war is set as an unconditional situation, but the absurd that the author wanted to create poisoned his writing and left us with a bitter aftertaste.

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20.12.2011.

THE GLOOMINESS OF AN OLD MAN

Srđan Srdić: Espirando (Stubovi kulture, Beograd, 2011.)

By: Leda Sutlović

A relatively unknown writer to the wider Croatian reading public, Srđan Srdić, is the author of the appraised novel The Dead Field and the director of the Festival of Short Stories ‘’The Kikinda Short’’, and the novel Espirando, subtitled ‘’The Songs on Death’’, is his first book of stories. The title of the book, easily translated as breathing or exiling, gives an idea of the main topic, the moment of death. The title is also a term from classical music that describes a special way of interpretation, and the music itself, especially the one on the Mexican border, which helps us understand this mess, is one of the basics and sources of inspiration for the stories.

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