When it was announced that the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Ani Erno, hardly anyone in Serbia knew who she was.
Understandable: her only three books in the Serbian language were published by Prosveta in 1997 - A simple passion, A place under the sun i I didn't get out of my night. It is true that two interviews were also published, in "Večernji novosti" in 1997 during her visit to Belgrade for book promotion, and in 2019 in NIN.
And then it turned out that Štrik Publishing House is currently preparing four books by Anna Erno, and that in two weeks, at the International Book Fair in Belgrade, her novel will appear Possession and by the end of December Years, An event, One woman.
Ljubica Pupezin, editor-in-chief of "Strika", tells "Vremena" portal that she first bought the copyright for the novel last year Years, that she was then offered three more titles to Anna Erno and that she accepted them. "It was, then, at a time when Anna Erno's candidacy for the Nobel Prize was not current."
"I've been saying for years that books by female authors are also intended for men, I'm sure that this Anna Erno award will confirm that," says Pupezin and explains that "women in literature dominate topics from the private sphere and that's why they're not valued as they deserve." However, let's admit that without the private sphere, the public cannot be built. In this sense, this year's decision of the Nobel Committee is a civilizational shift."
Novel Possession translated by Bojan Savić Ostojić. He says for the "Vremena" portal that he met Ani Erno through a book A simple passion.
"I came across it at the beginning of 2019, in Kalenić, at the noble price of fifty dinars, published by Prosveta and translated by Nada Bojić. It is a true 'French novel', without a trace of the tradition inherited by Diras or Sagan. Instead of fantasizing on the trail of her desires, she observes them sharply and presents to us the lowest in them, the essential obscenity that is not exposed in banal pornography but in psychology."
Nobel Prize LiteraturePhoto: AP
Bojan Savić Ostojić says that Anna Erno, whatever she writes about, "be it about the relationship with the family (like Places under the sun i One woman), whether her topic is a consideration of sexuality (simple passion, Possession i A girl's story), she measures every sentence for years and evaluates whether it saves at all. If she turns out to be self-indulgent, that's reason enough to delete her. The main rhythmic unit of her prose is therefore syncopation, the silence between the movements."
Novel Possession which will appear at the Fair, "is violently written, dedicated to barely concealed real persons", says Savić Ostojić, and recalls that "this text, which obsessively analyzes the jealousy of an abandoned woman, has also experienced a film adaptation - Another woman, Patrick Mario Bernard and Pierre Trividic".
How much is Ani Erno appreciated in Serbia?
"Well, like everything else: seasonal and without exaggeration." It was translated at the end of the nineties, when after Passions appeared A place under the sun i I didn't come out of my night (writing diary One woman). After 2000, it was completely forgotten. When in 2019 she entered the shortlist for the international Booker (book Years), it was welcomed by a part of the Serbian public like any other innovation from the West. It was as if no one had heard of her. In fact, the public's interest was aroused only by bookmakers for the Nobel Prize. It is not the first time that I have noted that in our culture, not only the narrowly bookish one, there is no continuity between the decades. And my surprise meeting with Passion in its own way, it testifies to that gap," says Bojan Savić Ostojić.
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