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
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
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
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
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
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
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