Roman
What is reality?
Ruth Ozeki, The Book of Form and Emptiness, translation from English by Aleksandar Milajić, Booka, Belgrade 2024.
Humanitarian Book Fair
Who participates in the alternative book fair at the Fourteenth Belgrade High School
While the International Book Fair opens with numerous cancellations, the students of the Fourteenth Belgrade High School organize a humanitarian book fair. Those who refused to participate in the "real" fair exhibit at it
Book Fair
The Book Fair: The Picture of Two Serbia begins
Despite the cancellation of certain publishers and requests to postpone this event, this year's Book Fair begins. The prime date is November 1 - the day that marks one year since the fatal fall of the canopy of the Railway Station in Novi Sad
About the book
Andrić's consumables
After more than four decades, six of Ivo Andrić's earliest notebooks, which moved from the pocket of his student coat, prisoner's shirt, diplomatic tailcoat, and finally, from his desk to his legacy's manuscript treasury, have been published in one book.
Interview: Slobodan Maksimović, director
Humor as protection against harmful environment
Many people approached me after the film with a smile, while wiping away tears. I think they are touched by the fact that the film covers an era of exceptional creators, who are an indispensable part of our common history
From the legacy of David Albahari
At the borders of the body
David Albahari, Judge Dimitrijevic/ Miss B., Magic book, Belgrade 2025.
Nobel prize
Hungarian writer Laszlo Krasnahorkai wins Nobel Prize in Literature
The winner of this year's Nobel Prize for Literature, Laszlo Krasnahorkai, is known for his long, winding sentences, dystopian and melancholic themes.
Interview: Jurica Pavičić, writer and columnist
I test my own ideology as devil's advocate
I know that some people do not like me politically because of my journalism, so that will certainly not change with this book, neither for the better nor for the worse. Last week, an extreme right-wing weekly published a cover with pictures of the seven of us and the headline: "Seven beat journalists". Somehow I don't believe that one book can change that much. But - I have my audience, both newspaper and book. The book is selling well in Croatia, which means that some people have a need for this kind of complicating things
In memoriam: Zdena Salivarová-Škvorecká (1933–2025)
The superfluous people of communism
Zdena's best work is a novel Stupid, in which there are autobiographical elements and which became a cult book of many Czech generations, both those in exile and in the homeland, because the book was smuggled en masse into Czechoslovakia through various underground channels. Stupid is today considered one of the fundamental books of Czech culture and is among the best prose works of Czech literature of the twentieth century
Essays
The Poetics of Disagreement
Susan Sontag, About women,
translation from English by Nada Donati; Štrik, Belgrade 2025.
Book Fair
Come to the virtual Book Fair
An initiative to hold a new Book Fair - in virtual space - appeared on social networks. Thus, book lovers will be able to shop without getting in the way of the management of the Belgrade Book Fair, which ignores the anniversary of the tragedy in Novi Sad on November 1.
About the book
How good life used to be
The truth is the greatest sensation - it is one of the rules applied by Nebojša Jovanović in his historical-novelistic book Prince Mihailo Obrenović's court about the ruler who turned Belgrade into the European capital
Theory
The price of not belonging: how and why to choose a side?
Precisely because he was, or knew how to impose himself, as an echo of the common ideology (both in "Karađorđević's" and in Tito's Yugoslavia), Andrić was "allowed" to choose whom and how he belonged. He was simply such a person and therefore, as a "common Yugoslav spiritual treasure", he managed to be "both theirs and ours", which the Right, also a classic of Croatian and Serbian, therefore Yugoslav, but undoubtedly also world literature, was not allowed
Interview: Srdjan Cvijic
Liquidation pits in the heart of Europe
"At the end of the sixties and the beginning of the seventies of the last century, money began to replace ideology in Yugoslavia, criminal activities increased. Criminals became a social phenomenon, and the secret service began to hire them abroad, giving them immunity in the country. This increasingly produced corrosion within the state. As a symbol of that time, I talk about Arkan in the book."
Interview: Klara Vlasakova, writer
Change is the only certainty in our lives
Often readers tell me that the book gives them discomfort, sometimes nightmares. My goal, of course, is not to make anyone feel bad, but at the same time, I don't know the purpose of writing that just slips away and leaves no impression, no scent, no memory. In that sense, I'm glad that Cracks they arouse emotions, questions. Discomfort
In memoriam: Luis Fernando Verisimo (1936–2025)
The shy giant
Verissimo's quips like "death is the last thing I want to happen to me", or "just when we think we know all the answers, life comes along and changes all the questions", have entered into everyday use.
New issue of Vremena
Udbaske liquidations: How criminals were scouted
In the book "Vixera", Srđan Cvijić documents in detail the murders carried out by the Yugoslav service in emigration. In the new issue, "Vreme" talks to Cvijić
Interview: Miodrag Stojković
I hope for a country to stay.
"I would give up any past or future recognition if that is a condition for the birth of another child. Every child is a new hope, if there are no children, there is none. I hope for a country where qualifications and knowledge are questioned, not their counterfeits"
Roman
Screams and whispers
Not to be outdone: the novels of the Spanish writer Almudena Grandes are enchanting. There are no formal breakthroughs, new literary procedures, language experiments, or labyrinths in them: Almudena Grandes simply knows how to tell stories and is not interested in anything other than storytelling.
Interview: Jelena Lengold
Listening to the corners of our beings
"One of my labels is that I write about love. I don't want to defend myself, but if I saw only love stories in this world, that would mean that my view is narrow and life is very romantic. But neither of those two is quite true."
Interview: Svetislav Basara, writer
"Existence is a waste of time"
There can be something - in fact there are many such "somethings" - but if we don't have a word for it, it doesn't exist for us. We have as much of the world as our language is rich, expressive and its verb forms and tenses are elaborate and sophisticated
Poetry
That's it
Inger Christensen, That's it, translation from Danish by Jelena Vojinović, Treći trg, Belgrade 2025.
Literature
Before and after the so-called death
Although he remains faithful to the poetics of the fragment, in the novel The Suicide of Leve he is closer to a more classical prose speech. Narrated in the second person, as an address to a dead friend, this novel confronts the fundamental phenomena of human existence: the experience of the world and man's place in it, posterity and the meaning of the family, contemporary art, the modern state, politics, etc. The story, certainly conditioned by the theme, is told in a slightly elevated tonality of modern, dark pathos, and yet with a certain cheerfulness, which is imposed by the fact that the most important event in the story, the denouement, happened already at the beginning