Post-Yugoslav Literature and Film

Fires, Foundations, Flourishes

Gordana P. Crnkovic

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781628926590
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781441113030
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The 1990s violence in the Former Yugoslavia, the worst in Europe since World War II, triggered the conversion of multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and cosmopolitan areas of idiosyncratic and independent socialism into regions of xenophobic nationalism, wars, and, afterwards, Western-style democracy and capitalism. Unified by their artistic response to these cataclysmic changes, post-Yugoslav literary works and films have much to offer the wider world.
Crnkovic reveals select post-Yugoslav literary and cinema works as groundbreaking exploratory achievements of global relevance. She presents post-Yugoslav literature and film as art that makes us aware of previously unconsidered things that bring us wars, and those that constitute part of the tapestry of peace. She foregrounds the radical potential of art to change and enrich the global landscapes of concepts, sensitivities, and politics. As such her book is important not only for those interested in this region, but also for all those wanting to discover and engage with world literature and cinema, and willing to encounter the potential of great new art to illuminate and challenge the world we live in.

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Pronunciation Guide
• Introduction: Post-Yugoslav Literature and Film, and a Different Kind of Knowledge
• 1 Foundations I: While Falling Asleep: A Trace of the Moment in Yugoslavia
• 2 Play and the Language of Community Against Rumor and the Guns: Alenka Mirković’s 91.6 MHz
• 3 Reclaiming Charisma, Resetting the Senses: Vladimir Arsenijević’s In the Hold
• 4 The Ethics of Listening and the Grounding of a Child: Milcho Manchevski’s Before the Rain
• 5 Foundations II: Eternal Realms and Individual Victims in Ivo Andrić’s Ex Ponto and Unrest
• 6 “The Truthful Road to Me”: Short Takes on Six Bosnian Films
• 7 Under the Star of Orwell: Jurica Pavičić’s Plaster Sheep and Ante Tomić’s Nothing Should Surprise Us
• 8 The Museum Spills Out on the Square, the Past’s Challenge to the Present: The Films of Vinko Brešan
• 9 I am You and You are Me: On Liberating Anti-Nationalism
• 10 Pleasant Distractions: The Danger of Close-ups and Maja Weiss’s The Border Guard
• 11 Foundations III: Success vs. Logic: Miroslav Krleža’s On the Edge of Reason
• 12 Anarchists Today: The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
• Bibliography
• Index