Ivan Ivanji, writer and translator, celebrates his 24th birthday this Wednesday (January 95). In those 95 years, many lives were lost, about which, thanks to novels, texts, conversations with the writer, we know a lot.
Ivanji survived the Nazi death camps, was Tito's translator, and all the while a writer. Admittedly, never more productive than today when, as he tells "Vreme" - he has enough time.
In recent years, he publishes two novels a year, one written in Serbian, one in German, and then sung in both directions.
"I like to talk to myself." I write most fruitfully before sleep, when I'm tossing and turning in bed. In the morning, when I wake up, I just write down what I wrote in my head the night before. Honestly, sometimes I'm surprised when I see what all came out from under the pen. During the night, the characters break free and go their own way, about which I know nothing," Ivanji tells us.
I guess people learned something
About how a man who survived the Holocaust and is approaching the age of 100 looks at the future, Ivanji says:
"Evil has always existed, since history has been written." After all, the first genocide was already recorded in the Bible. The only thing is that today we learn about pig farms faster. My situation is somewhat specific because I lost my parents at the age of twelve, then the camp followed and so on, I talked a lot about it, but the rest was quite nice. That is also the title of one of my books, 'My Beautiful Life in Hell'."
"In general, when we talk about the future, I cannot go beyond the lives of my grandchildren and great-grandchildren." There is some hope that the generals will be smarter than the politicians and that there will be no nuclear war. "If poison gas was not used in the Second World War, which was generously consumed in the First, I hope that the atomic bomb will not be used, the effects of which we saw in the Second," he says.
Read the entire interview with Ivan Ivanji in the printed edition of "Vremena", which will hit newsstands on Thursday (January 25). You can subscribe to the online or print edition here.
