Yugoslavia, my land by Goran Vojnovic

I am not discovering the gunpowder if I say that the word “homeland” comes from Latin. To be exact, it comes from the feminine form of the adjective “Patrius-A-MUM” (relative to father, also to “Patres”, which are the ancestors). So this week we had to bring a book that would talk about both issues.

That book is this Yugoslavia, mi tierra of the young Slovenian writer Goran Vojnovic who, with only 32 years, has managed to combine records and styles with a remarkable success and has built a novel that could well be the Patria Balkics, although without (apparent) simplifications. But let’s stop Best-Sellers and demonstrate to this book the space that it deserves and that I believe has not had in Spain.

My childhood ended at any morning at the beginning of the summer of 1991 It is the first phrase of the novel and is the first key moment in the story of Vladan Borojevic. It is the moment in which the transfer to Belgrade of Nedeljko Borojevic, Vladan’s father and member of the Yugoslav popular army, as a consequence of the political situation in the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia; It is the moment that marks a before and after in family life.

The second key moment takes place in 2007 when Vladan discovers that his father is not dead, as his mother implied, and that he is still alive, although hidden since he is sought by the Hague court for war crimes. This revelation causes Vladan to undertake the search for Nedeljko on a journey through Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and Slovenia that has, in its first part, much of Road Movie.

In this first part, Vojnovic intersperses episodes separated by more than fifteen years away (sometimes up to more) and offers, with a fry -rhythm a hard, violent, ironic, critical portrait – The beings that inhabit these latitudes prefer not to realize anything – And sometimes also melancholic of what was and what is now the territory of ancient Yugoslavia, a portrait in which guilt, memory, or identity play a primary role

As we advance in reading, Vojnovic is changing registration and offers us a much more intimate, more “sentimental” narrative. The author must be recognized for his ambition to build a more “total” novel, for trying not to remain alone in the novel “Mystery” that could have been if he had focused only on the search for Nedeljko Borojevic, thus, the study of family relations and relationships, fears and repeated errors, confessions and justifications gain weight and offer greater complexity to the novel, although in exchange for the loss of loss of some of the initial force.

Even so, I already say that a novel more than recommended, agile, complex and with varied readings to taste of the “consumer.”