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.
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
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
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
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
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
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