Destiny, Annotated balances postmodern self-awareness with an imagination grounded in history and tradition. Here is the embodiment of historiographic metafiction, a self-reflexive narrative that examines not only its own historical postulates but also the grounds and scope of historical knowledge itself. Readers will find themselves skillfully catered to, whether they prefer the traditional or the avant-garde. Petković gives us characters caught in the whirlwind of history, heroes who face their destinies and say no. Spanning the period from the 18th century to the 20th, this novel also conjures a fanciful and highly (post)modern vision of the place we know from Borges, that garden of forking paths.''Tihomir Brajović

    Lively, intelligent, and complex, she hides a big heart behind a surly look, and expresses herself in highly-colored, provocative language. Such language serves as an act of revolt against a society which has learned to distill horror-horror which her boyfriend encounters first hand on the battlefront. Coming across old belongings of her grandmother, Jelena reconstructs her tale, using imagination where the puzzle reveals no concrete truth.The life uncovered is one of passion and terror, and of crossed romance. A young woman caught between loyalties-to her step-brother, fellow explorer of sex and true friend; to her ideologies and principles; and to an officer of the formidable secret police. Does she resign herself to a disinherited life at the mercy of those running the country? And who is the father of her child? The grandfather of her grandchild?Selenic deftly links broken lives, bound by war across a chasm of half a century, in an elegant and amusing voice.

    Ćamil, a wealthy young man of Smyrna living in the last years of the Ottoman Empire, is fascinated by the story of Džem, ill-fated brother of the Sultan Bajazet, who ruled Turkey in the fifteenth century. Ćamil, in his isolation, comes to believe that he is Džem, and that he shares his evil destiny: he is born to be a victim of the State. Because of his stories about Džem’s ambitions to overthrow his brother, Ćamil is arrested under suspicion of plotting against the Sultan. He is taken to a prison in Istanbul, where he tells his story, to Petar, a monk.Out of these exotic materials, Andrić has constructed a book of great clarity, brevity and interest. No doubt it will be read by some as a political parable about the tyranny of the State, but also as a quite simply story about ill-fortune and human misunderstanding, fear and ignorance. Džem and Ćamil are doomed – and the certainty of their persecution is sometimes relieved, sometimes intensified by the stupidity and fright of the people who cross their ill-starred lives.Construction takes up most of the book’s space: the central story of Džem as related by Ćamil lasts only a chapter or two. For the rest of the time the reader strips layer off layer, as one narrator passes him on the next. There is an interesting passage that helps to explain this method, at the moment when Ćamil starts narrating Džem’s story in the first person. “I” is a word, we are told, which fixes the position of the speaker in such a way that the exercise of will is no longer possible, and the speaker strength is exceeded – strength, presumably, to break out of the identification that all his past actions and thoughts force upon him when he uses the word. “I” is both a confession and an imprisonment. The fact that the novel passes the reader on from one narrator to the next rather suggests that the author is taking constant evasive action, lest he betray himself or his reader into the kind of “personal confession” which seals the fate of Ćamil. What exactly this game of form flirting with meaning signifies, must be left to the individual reader.The movement is centripetal, towards Džem’s story, and then disperses. Details within the story are made to mimic this form. Thus when Peter receives the message telling him of his impending release:“Two younger prisoners...were chasing around using him as the centerpoint of ever narrowing circles. Annoyed, he tried to break away from these exuberant youths when one of them brushed against him and he felt a folded scrap of paper thrust into his hand. The youths continued their chase but now in widening circles...”The reader is led on just such a chase in the course of the novel. The effect of this is to make the plot seem more like a poetic image than an ordinary plot: capable, therefore, of as many meanings as are the images of an allusive poem. Yet the language is simple and direct, not at all “poetic”. The characters are remarkable alive, even in conversation. Karađoz, the governor of the goal, is a spidery authoritarian, who loves to torment the charges he loves. The prisoners “complained about the way one complains about one’s life and curses one’s destiny...it would have been hard for them to imagine life without him”.“The Devil’s Yard” is justified, as all symbolic and figurative novels must be, by the extent to which it touches the emotions. It is extremely moving. Fear, horror, despair, amusement at times – all these indicate that the threat of the meaning has been recognized.

    the novel was condemmed by the Communist Party and subsequently banned. It is the first of his novels to appear in English.Alija Osmanovic, the protagonist of Knife, was orphaned during WWII as an infant. He was raised as a Bosnian Muslim and came to believe that the Serbs killed his family. When, as a young medical student, he goes in search of the identity of his murdered birth-parents, a sense of thwarted justice motivates him, and expresses itself as a burning passion for revenge. Alija seeks out Sikter Efendi, an eccentric and reclusive Muslim cleric, to help him interpret clues pointing to his identity. Through his mentorship, Alija discovers the truth: that his heritage is Serbian; that he was born not far away but in the neighboring village; and that his adoptive family was guilty of murdering his birth-family. A crisis of identity ensues. Each possible course of action open to him is bad. How is he to go on?

    

    A Muslim, he marries a Christian girl who supports him while he dabbles in politics, eventually leading a raid to rescue a friend from jail.

    The fruit of this literary research is this book, a book that will help you grasp the essence of the Serbian people and their way of life. This longtime columnist for the distinguished Serbian daily Politika and the monthly magazine JAT Review, published by JAT Airways, has compiled the best and most interesting of his articles for this book, which is richly illustrated with his own drawings. This book's readers will learn, through a self-ironic and humorous tone typical of books by George Mikesh, Efraim Kishon and Art Buchwald, what Serbs like and dislike, whom they admire and despise, what they eat and what they drink, how they spend their free time, what they dream about and what they believe; in a word, book is about what constitutes a Serb from the inside.

    It is a magic tale based on an insignificant event: the painting of a roof of a bluesky color by removing it from its place. Petrovic has written a great universal story along the lines of magical realism, that reminds of some of the best books of Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges and Carlos Fuentes.

    On board, he meets the spirited and mercurial Robert Clive, determined – at whatever cost – to make a fortune in a land of opportunity.Over the years that follow, their friendship sees many twists and turns as Clive’s restless hunger for wealth and power takes him from being a clerk to a commander in the Company’s forces, masterminding plans to snuff out rival French interests in Hindustan and eventually leading the company forces to victory at Plassey, the prelude to nearly two centuries of foreign rule in Hindustan.Brilliantly crafted, and bringing to life the momentous events that shook India in the mid-eighteenth century, Fortune’s Soldier is an epic tale of a fascinating era by a master storyteller.

    My Family's Role in the World Revolution was originally published in Yugoslavia in 1969; it enjoyed a successful run as a play, but the firm version was closed immediately and ultimately caused Cosic's publications to be banned in that country for over four years. My Family's Role in the World Revolution takes place in Yugoslavia during and after World War II. During the German occupation of Belgrade, family members - an alarmist mother whose off-the-wall comments are always right on target, an eternally inebriated father, two young aunts who swoon over American movie stars, and a playboy uncle - keep attempting to find any kind of work they can do at home. Then, as the postwar Socialist society is being ushered into this Belgrade kitchen, the narrator, a naively wise schoolboy, becomes the slogan-spouting ideological leader of the household, while the remaining members try - and often fail miserably - to take part in the "great change." With humor reminiscent of Bohumil Hrabal and experimentation reminiscent of James Joyce, Cosic exposes the underside of the Communist revolution, revealing its destructive effects: chaos, bewilderment, and fear. This volume also includes several of Cosic's short stories, as well as recent essays in which he denounces the most recent war that has left him without a homeland.

    This novel parallels the myth of Hero and Leander, telling of two lovers in Belgrade, one from the turn of the 18th century, the other from early in the 20th, who reach out to each other across the gulf of time.

     Mare Internum. Mesogeios. The Mediterraneus. That sea has been known by many names since the creation of the world. To the people living around its shores, it was the entire world. Myron had no use for the myriad of gods that the people of his village worshiped - and cursed. And it was obvious to himself that those immortals, in turn, had no interest in a young man whose future would be bound by the reed pools and swamps of the Nilos delta. His disinterest was such that he seldom even bothered to bash the ears of whichever deity was supposedly responsibility for the daily misfortunes of an orphan. Then came the evening when the marauders struck... Had he been given even a glimpse of his future from that moment on, he would have dismissed it as the ravings of a drunken myth weaver. In fact, the story might have been similar to the tales that were told on occasion, around the evening fires, by an itinerant bard who entertained the village in return for a bone to gnaw and a jar of bitter beer to quaff. But, sanctioned by the gods or no, his future would take him to the far reaches of the known world. And his rise from the lowest drudge to the command of men was certainly not derived from bending his knee to some vaporous deity, but by innate skill and the ability to take the measure of a man. Indeed, his story was the kind of tale that a bard loved and would cause his listeners sit in total silence to hear. After all, why would a man in reality, who had fought his way to power and riches, would give them up for a mere woman and an uncertain future? Of course, only the gods knew of his unique gift...

    The characters in these stories are caught in a world of political hypocrisy, which ultimately leads to death, their common fate. Although the stories Kis tells are based on historical events, the beauty and precision of his prose elevates these ostensibly true stories into works of literary art that transcend the politics of their time.

    It is extremely important, that is true, but the way Vladislav Bajac performs his little literary alchemy trick by turning a grand, totalizing narrative into something personal, and thus giving it credibility, zest and liveliness, is truly amazing. The Ottoman empire and its subjects in Southeastern Europe, East and West, Sokollu Mehmed Pasha and Koca Mimar Sinan, destruction and creation, are the crucial elements of this meticulously organized story. One of the two lines of the story starts with an unprecedent human drama of young men born and raised in one faith and nation who are forcefully taken to serve in the other; the line of the plot that takes place in the contemporary world, with Orhan Pamuk, Allen Ginsberg and Juan Octavio Prenz among others, is seemingly independent but strongly connected to the historical one. In a story of a friendship, of unique soul-searching and redemption, we are offered a picture of the world that gently warns us to be careful, patient and wise when forming opinions both of the things we know well, and of those that reached us through history.Hamam Balkania received the Balkanika Award for the best novel in the Balkans for 2007/2008, the "Isidora Sekulić" Award for the best book in 2008 and the "Hit Liber" Award for the bestselling book in the same year. At the moment it is being translated into ten languages.

    Overwhelmed by the horror of his discoveries as they become entangled with his own feverish imaginings, he organizes a class trip. The school bus becomes Götz and Meyer’s truck, and the teacher and his students merge with Belgrade’s lost souls in a sacred act of remembering.