Goran Vojnović

Somewhat like Marcello Fois in The Time In Between, Vojnovic’s work tackles both personal history and the history of the former Yugoslavia at the same time. Jadran, whose family comes from different ethnicities and different places, spends most of the book searching for answers to questions about his parents and his grandparents, answers to questions about himself, all while wrestling with larger questions of identity, exile, and belonging. All this is tangled up with the breakup and wars occurring in the region during the 1990s as well as the breakup of Jadran’s own marriage. Belonging and betrayal; intimacy and estrangements; there is more than enough—perhaps, in the end, too much—for any one book. The book is about the stories we stuggle to construct to understand who we are and where we come from. Although the translation reads easily, I didn’t particularly enjoy the book. It won several prizes in Slovenia, the author’s home country, but perhaps the author’s style simply doesn’t speak to me. I should note that I was intrigued to discover that on goodreads, 17 of the 18 reviews written in Slovenian gave the book either four or five stars. I guess the book simply didn’t resonate with me.… (mehr)

This is a multi-generational family saga set in the Balkans starting with the years under Tito then Slovenian independence and then the Bosnia wars up to the present day. The book begins with the story of the grandfather as his family gathers together when he dies. He continues with stories of the other family members as the grandson tries to understand his family and himself. The book covers events in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia and provides the reader with new insights into the complex history and culture of the Balkans.

I have very mixed feelings about the book. Although the book provides some in depth perspectives on the book's characters, at the end of the book, I felt that their characterizations were really so superficial that I did not know much about the characters. That said, the portrait of the grandmother's growing dementia is very touching. The book is also full of invectives against Bosnians. Finally, the way the book is structured is a challenge. The book switches from first person to first person without really making it clear who the chapter is about. Similarly, it jumps from time period to time period. This made the book more trouble than it was worth.… (mehr)

Marko is a 17-year-old teenager of Bosnian descent, who lives in the overcrowded, ethnically-mixed, blue-collar Ljubljana neighborhood of Fužine. Through his narrative we learn about the life of ex-Yugoslavia immigrants in Slovenia.

The short, humor-filled, encyclopedic chapters (they often start with Why or How, for example, Why Do Čefurs Play Music Out Loud While Driving) are well connected into the overall story and act as a mirror of society's behaviour towards its minorities and vice-versa. Vojnović does not pull punches from either side, yet it is clear his intention is not to judge or to produce earth-shattering social thesis on minority life, but simply to describe what life in Fužine is like in a humorous, yet thought-provoking fashion.… (mehr)