A romantic story about the Fifth October
Cohabitation
Konstantin, one of the leading actors of the Serbian Fifth October revolution when Milosevic’s regime was defeated, not wanting to give up his ideals, loses his job, family, and parents. He was forced to return to Bulkes, his birthplace located in the province of Vojvodina. In order to escape from reality, he begins to investigate the past of Andreas Awender, a pre-Second World War doctor and revolutionary. This ‘investigation’, full of forgotten people who suddenly come to life, helps Konstatin to overcome defeats and learn to live with what he cannot change.
“I am fascinated, without exaggeration, how modern history slipped from the writer’s pen mixed with personal, general social themes, how it all poured into form because it was composed in the head, soul, heart. The ancient past intertwines with the present through personal stories, everything is skilfully connected, the history of a place that is talked about by people, houses, cemeteries – and thus nothing remains buried.”
Dragica Pantic
In 2010, the novel “Cohabitation” was shortlisted for the regional VBZ award (among 103 novels) for the best unpublished novel. The jury consisted of the leading regional authors Miljenko Jergovic, Vladimir Arsenijevic, Zoran Feric, Julijana Matanovic and Strahinja Primorac.
Novi Sad: Rosencrantz; 2013.
Strappado
Vladimir’s father was a communist and a revolutionary and his brother died in a concentration camp during the Second World War. Thirty years later Vladimir finds himself in Edinburgh, on a secret mission, together with a young trainee who dreams to become a writer. The days are passing but the further instructions from the Yugoslav Secret Service are not coming…
The novel Strappado was short-listed in the VBZ regional prize for 2019 (within the best six among 97 novels) by the jury made of the leading regional authors and critics: Zoran Feric, Strahimir Primorac, Jagna Pogacnik, Drago Glamuzina and Mile Stojic.
Belgrade: IBN Studio, 2019.
Patchwork
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A bildungs novel about Bono, who was growing up in Yugoslavia, just to witness its bloody decay. As a teenager, Bono decides to fight against Milosevic’s regime. Once Milosevic is defeated, new disappointments wait for Bono, who is finally forced to go to exile.
Belgrade: IBN Studio, 2019.
Migratory Birds
The awarded manuscript presents a deeply thoughtful and multi-layered novelistic story about growing up in times of crisis and transition. It is narrated from the perspective of a boy on the cusp of adolescence, who is trying to understand his own identity and find his place in a fractured world.
The narrative unfolds from the intimate setting of the family to the wider outside world, and through three generations—school-age children of various ages, their parents, and grandparents—it paints a precise picture of the social context, showing the various ways in which that context exerts pressure on the family nucleus.
The fates of these characters reflect many of the hardships endured by the Serbian people at the end of the last century and into the new one. The story follows war refugees who have had to abandon their homes and homeland, resettling in the grandmother’s old house in a village in Vojvodina, near the canal and close to the Danube.
The young protagonist stands apart from his surroundings. He is aware of this, yet he allows each of his friends the freedom to be who they are. He processes his worries and concern for those close to him through solitude, reading, and—above all—observing birds. In doing so, he matures, rising above his environment with a sense of inner depth, evident even in the way he experiences and overcomes his first love.
Migratory Birds is distinguished by its literary quality, maturity, well-structured form, and coherent concept. It is a story of a family that, despite life’s hardships, finds the strength and faith to face new challenges—building a home not in the external world, but within, through mutual love. The novel returns us to fundamental human values and offers young readers strength for navigating life in the present.
From the Jury Statement for the “Sovica” Award
The novel also received the Stanko Rakita Award for 2023.
Sarajevo: Institute for Textbook Publishing, 2023.
Melkior's Act
Predrag Duric’s new novel, Melkior’s Act, is a story about one of the greatest themes of all: freedom.
The author boldly tackles a demanding (literary) situation—namely, the individual caught in the web, the vortex, the whirlpool of a system, of ideology. Sound familiar? Sound Kafkaesque? It is Kafkaesque. Melkior’s Act raises a series of profound questions about the position of the individual within a rigid yet highly efficient system where, overnight, everything can change.
This change is not some metaphorical shifting of ground—it is the very real imprisonment of a person. But this is not a dense, impenetrable literary text. Quite the opposite. Predrag Duric has managed to write a gripping novel on a theme that deeply unsettles.
Melkior’s Act will prompt us, once again, to ask: what does it mean to act—or not to act—and where are the limits of our (in)action?
— Bojan Krivokapic
Belgrade: IBN Studio, 2023.
Five Fat Poets
In the opinion of the jury, among the literary works submitted for this year’s award competition, the novel Five Fat Poets stands out for its ambition and meticulousness.
Childhood friends reunite at the “Crnjanski” bar on the Petrovaradin Fortress in a tentative attempt to reset their lives by reviving the rock band Five Fat Poets, of which they were briefly members during the 1980s. The novel captures an extraordinary day in the lives of these five friends, while “pauses” in the narrative—reminiscent of Murakami—delve into their individual pasts. Through these personal stories, we come to recognise the recent history of the region and the slow decline of a fragile yet valuable culture forged over the course of the 20th century.
By recounting the intertwined yet distinct destinies of five very different individuals, the novel weaves a complex portrait of Novi Sad and Vojvodina’s political, social, cultural, economic, and artistic realities over the past century. Underpinning this reality is a spiderweb of skilfully embedded quotations, drawn from the works of numerous writers (Vasko Popa, Judita Šalgo, Bogdan Čiplić, Franjo Petrinović, Đorđe Pisarev, Ferenc Deák, Florika Štefan, Vladimir Tasić, Slobodan Tišma, László Végel, Branko Andrić, and dozens more).
Readers will sense in this novel a distinctive atmosphere of a unique space and time—one that most closely resembles hell, and yet, through the narrator’s irony, empathy, and humour, is ultimately rendered in a paradoxical tone of cheerful melancholy.
We are presented with a mature literary work: lucid, powerful, engaging, and self-aware—a postmodern “use of man,” as it were—building on the most successful prose achievements from this region, of which the work of Stevan Pešić was and remains a vital expression.
Belgrade: Rastan Publishing, 2024.
