Archive
Reviews
Readings of books from the region and beyond.
Try a theme — e.g. memory, exile, language. Search by idea, not just by title.
Glasnik i Razdvajanje: The Instability of Reality
Dario Šarec's paired novels use fantasy elements — most notably black and white rabbits as archetypal symbols — to destabilize reality and suggest its stability was always an illusion. The review credits the short-sentence, cinematic style with strong readability, but faults occasional Hollywood clichés and overly explicit dialogue. Ultimately it finds the books work as engaging thrillers yet retreat into safe genre conventions rather than sustaining true literary disruption.
- Science fiction
- Contemporary fiction
Esej o noći: Darkness as a Return to the Self
Marko Pogačar's Esej o noći is a genre-defying text — part travelogue, memoir, criticism, and poetry — built on the idea that night, not day, is the universe's primordial state. The review reads it as timely resistance to a culture of constant visibility, praising its dense, metaphor-rich prose leavened by well-placed humor. It emerges as a demanding but rewarding work that rewards a reader's full attention.
- Poetry
- Essay
Svijet koji sam izabrala: A Life in the Basement
Kalina Maleska's award-winning novel follows Leona's descent into a basement apartment as a literal and figurative image of women's precarity under patriarchal control and everyday violence. The review praises its precise, unsensational social realism as among the author's most mature work. It notes, however, that supporting characters stay underdeveloped and that the book diagnoses conditions sharply without opening a clear path toward transformation.
- Women's writing
- Macedonian literature
- Contemporary fiction
Putovanja slijepih: A Map of the Fascinating, the Forgotten, and the Marginal
Rade Jarak's Putovanja slijepih is built from eight microcycles organized around recurring themes such as ghosts, travel, war, art, and madness, with blindness serving as a metaphor for a world unable to see itself. The review admires the book's intellectual reach and formal invention, singling out passages of cinematic suggestiveness. It finds the result uneven, though, as the fragmented structure sometimes slips into a catalog of associations and formal self-indulgence.
- Short stories
Tako neka bude: Between History and the Present
Robert Međurečan's ambitious novel relocates its story to first-century Judea, following Eleazar, a priest's son turned prophet-hunter, to explore messianism and divine authority in a tradition of anti-gospel reinterpretations alongside Saramago and Kazantzakis. The review credits the sharp, rhythmic prose and thematic reach, but finds the writing too direct and lacking aesthetic distance. It judges the ending, a Judas parallel, oversimplified, leaving the book provocative yet not fully realized.
- Memory & history
- Post-Yugoslav literature
- Contemporary fiction
Chinook: Both Document and Elegy
"Chinook" is Bekim Sejranović's posthumously published, unfinished novel, a meditation on fractured and unstable identity carried by a narrator and his alter ego "Žutokosi." The review reads its incompleteness as a strength that lends the book a certain poetry, and admires its restless engagement with language, etymology, and translation. It regards the work as both document and elegy, a fitting final statement shaped by exile and displacement.
- Identity & belonging
- Contemporary fiction
Najbolje je već prošlo: The Anguish of a Betrayed Generation
"Najbolje je već prošlo" is Danilo Stojić's award-winning story collection about the anxiety of a disillusioned generation caught between Yugoslavia's legacy and capitalist present-day Serbia. The review praises it as a formally mature, convincing book that captures the spirit of the age, singling out the assured use of contemporary urban slang as genuine characterization rather than decoration. It notes a possible limitation in the recurring introspective, cynical male voice.
- Short stories
- Society & politics
Kao da nema sutra: An Intriguing Premise, a Lukewarm Execution
"Kao da nema sutra" is Borna Vujčić's novel about a virus that selectively kills people deemed immoral, narrated by a God figure conceived in feminist terms. The review finds the premise intriguing but the execution weak, faulting the narrative device as trivial and self-referential and the language as pedestrian. It argues the book leaves its central moral questions unexamined and closes on a facile, unconvincing resolution.
- Science fiction
- Contemporary fiction
Cimetna pisma, dijamantna stvorenja: A Love Story in Post-Apocalyptic Times
"Cimetna pisma, dijamantna stvorenja" is Faruk Šehić's ambitious, technically accomplished novel that uses a fragmented, non-linear structure to render a fractured reality through memory and association. The review admires its craft and its personification of war as a predatory character, while reading this as a sign the author cannot free himself from the burden of the past. It faults commonplace observations that undercut the book's philosophical ambition and wishes he would move beyond war narratives.
- Science fiction
- Poetry
- Post-Yugoslav literature
Bejturan i ruža: The Boundaries of Love, Loss, and Identity
"Bejturan i ruža" is Aleksandar Hemon's novel that centers the love between Pinto and Osman rather than exile itself, refusing to become another nostalgic migration story. The review counts it among Hemon's finest, praising a multilingual texture that leaves eight languages untranslated to reflect Pinto's Sephardic Jewish identity and dismantle the illusion of a single tongue. It admires how the book places small, marginal figures fully inside the grip of grand history, with only the epilogue judged superfluous.
- Identity & belonging
- Memory & history
- Post-Yugoslav literature
U haosu radost: Poetic Defiance
Kalija Dimitrova's poetry collection "U haosu radost" is read as a vibrant act of poetic defiance against the commercialism of contemporary life. Despite the title's promise of joy, the review finds the verses steeped in melancholy and introspection, carrying a naturally integrated feminism that questions traditional female roles and unequal relationships. It highlights the sharp, lucid social critique delivered through subtle, sarcastic humor rather than pathos.
- Poetry
Put od crvene cigle: An Anti-Patriarchal Discourse
Marijana Čanak's prose collection "Put od crvene cigle" organizes itself around menstruation and its cyclical phases, treated as a symbol of female vitality rather than weakness. The review admires the coherent, skillful writing and its subversion of patriarchal demands, noting how the female characters emerge as stronger and more dominant. It tempers the praise by observing that the persistent framing of women as victims and men as aggressors can feel limiting.
- Women's writing
- Short stories
Albert: A Poetic Yearning for Freedom
Ivica Prtenjača's novel "Albert" follows a university professor who, recovering from an accident, abandons his academic career in a personal quest for freedom against societal constraints. The review admires the poetic structure, with the whole story unfolding over a single night in a rhythm close to a poem, and reads the protagonist's respectful friendships with women as a quiet critique of patriarchal thinking. It raises one reservation: the author may be growing repetitive, staying within familiar terrain.
- Contemporary fiction
Oče, ako jesi: A Complicated Subject, a Complicated Form
Julijana Adamović's novel "Oče, ako jesi" explores fatherhood, generational trauma and patriarchal violence through Nađ Pal, a Yugoslav Hungarian who abandons three families. The review credits the book's historical depth, psychological reach and witty, vintage prose, but questions its fragmented form, which darts between characters and timelines like a pinball and makes the narrative hard to follow. The verdict is mixed: an ambitious work whose complicated structure may not best serve its weighty themes.
- Contemporary fiction
- Short stories
Knjiga za Maju: Only Love Makes Sense
Marko Tomaš's novel "Knjiga za Maju" deliberately fragments its narrative, turning discontinuity and "jumps" into both device and metaphor for the nomadic nature of lived experience. Though Maja never appears as a character, she serves as the book's only constant, the axis around which meaning gathers. The review reads the work as fully lyrical and literarily inspired, arriving at the message that only love gives things meaning.
- Contemporary fiction
- Poetry
- Post-Yugoslav literature
Noćni autobus: Beyond the Yugo-Wardrobe
A collection of twenty-three stories grouped into three sections — Childhood, Summer, and Dream — that moves from autobiographical fiction toward magical realism while confronting the marginalization of minorities, LGBTQ+ persecution, and the traumas of 1990s Macedonia. The review credits the book's thematic ambition and firm conceptual structure, but finds its language too plain and its style underdeveloped, missing the chance to stand out through more figurative writing.
- Short stories
- Society & politics
Do boljeg jučer: Many Possible Readings
A novel that uses a science-fiction, time-travel premise to explore post-war life in Sarajevo, where characters share a tendency to blame the war for their failures. The review reads it less as a book about war than about present-day burden, and questions the naive idea that killing Milošević could have prevented conflict. It finds the work underdeveloped on both the speculative and psychological levels, though open enough to invite many possible interpretations.
- Science fiction
- Contemporary fiction
Očenaš: From Recollection to Remembrance
A novel that voices the final reflections of an elderly woman, structuring memory as a non-linear, randomly shuffled photo album while foregrounding a female perspective and critiquing patriarchal family structures. The review praises this intent as worthy of attention, but faults the execution: the philosophical passages often slip into stereotypical banality rather than earned insight, and the repeated direct address to the reader comes across as superfluous and tiresome.
- Memory & history
- Contemporary fiction
Svijet je gladno mjesto: Between the Conscious and the Unconscious
A collection of fourteen stories about outwardly functional yet inwardly disconnected characters, drawing on Freudian ideas of repression, rationalization, and denial, with dreams recurring as expressions of unconscious desire. The review welcomes it as a refreshing move away from contemporary autofiction and finds its psychoanalytic engagement intellectually rewarding. It notes, however, that the writing could have trusted readers more and given the characters greater literary depth.
- Short stories
Pisma iz Vinogradske: A Novel of Life and Death
A novel set in a hospital that turns the ward into a kind of stage where crime, love, jealousy, and the full range of human situations intersect around the constant presence of death. The review reads it as life-affirming rather than bleak, using comedy and dark humor to make light of mortality. It admires this approach, while faulting the book for thin psychological development, relying more on mimicking real people than on truly probing human consciousness.
- Contemporary fiction