Goran Vojnović

This is a multi-generational family saga set in the Balkans starting with the years under Tito then Slovenian independence and then the Bosnia wars up to the present day. The book begins with the story of the grandfather as his family gathers together when he dies. He continues with stories of the other family members as the grandson tries to understand his family and himself. The book covers events in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia and provides the reader with new insights into the complex history and culture of the Balkans.

I have very mixed feelings about the book. Although the book provides some in depth perspectives on the book's characters, at the end of the book, I felt that their characterizations were really so superficial that I did not know much about the characters. That said, the portrait of the grandmother's growing dementia is very touching. The book is also full of invectives against Bosnians. Finally, the way the book is structured is a challenge. The book switches from first person to first person without really making it clear who the chapter is about. Similarly, it jumps from time period to time period. This made the book more trouble than it was worth.… (mais)

Marko is a 17-year-old teenager of Bosnian descent, who lives in the overcrowded, ethnically-mixed, blue-collar Ljubljana neighborhood of Fužine. Through his narrative we learn about the life of ex-Yugoslavia immigrants in Slovenia.

The short, humor-filled, encyclopedic chapters (they often start with Why or How, for example, Why Do Čefurs Play Music Out Loud While Driving) are well connected into the overall story and act as a mirror of society's behaviour towards its minorities and vice-versa. Vojnović does not pull punches from either side, yet it is clear his intention is not to judge or to produce earth-shattering social thesis on minority life, but simply to describe what life in Fužine is like in a humorous, yet thought-provoking fashion.… (mais)

Marko and his friends are in their late teens, living in the crappy projects of Fuzine in Ljubljana. Their parents are bosnians, serbs and croatians, all gathered in the ”most European” corner of ex-Yugo to find work and the possiblity of a german-made car. Marko, Dejan, Aco and Adi are not bosnians or serbs or croats or bosniaserbs, not really. But they’re certaintly not slovenian either. They’re ”Cefurji”, distinctively second class citizens with little hope for the future. Marko, in his crudely humourous way, takes the reader by the hand through this neighborhood, sharing his insights on the differences between Cefur and Slovenian, the subtleties of family conversation among the Balkan clans and the impossibility of building an identity worth it’s name when there isn’t even a football team worth the name to follow.

But in between the brutally amusing anecdotes a sinister plot is unravelling as well. Getting drunk on a bus as a way to handle getting kicked off the basketball team leads to the bus driver calling the police. Which leads to the police beating them up and throwing them in the slammer overnight. Which leads to a brewing need for revenge – and one day Aco has the name of the driver. The fucker is even Cefurji – supposed to be one of them!

I’ve read a thousand books like this, about youth caught in between their immigrant parents and a society that doesn’t want them. And more often than not, they aret old just like this one, episodic, with some humor, some violence and a streak of real pain underneath. This is neither the best or the worst of them. The setting, and the tension between the more and less fortunate parts of former Yugoslavia is the most interesting part.… (mais)