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Nenad Velickovic |
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Lodgers
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Format: Paperback |
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Category: Fiction |
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ISBN: 0 86322 348 6 |
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Publication Date: Available |
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Description
Lodgers is a hilarious, unsentimental report from the front lines of the Balkan wars of the 1990s. All of the folly and the horror of that time are revealed in the sarcastic report of the novel's teenage would-be authoress.
Maja lives in the basement of a Sarajevo museum, enduring with equal annoyance Serb artillery and vegetarian meals that taste like fried sponge. Her father, the museum director, zealously guards the treasures upstairs while their aged co-lodger Julio plots to trade them away. Maja's mother copes with yoga while dour stepbrother Davor endures the endless crying and cravings of his pregnant wife. Floating amidst it all is Maja's grandmother, blind and deaf, yet drawn to any conversation involving food.
Need and crisis propel Maja and her companions from one humorous situation to another. Yet her pitch-perfect gallows humour makes it clear that the brutalities of war penetrate these small moments of life – and even the self-centeredness of a teenaged girl. A best seller in the Balkans and widely translated in Europe – but not until now into English – Lodgers is that rare thing: an uncompromising yet humorous novel about a modern tragedy. |
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Author
Nenad Velickovic was born in Sarajevo in 1962. He is the author of novels short stories, essays, tv and radio scripts and plays. He has received many awards for his writing and he teaches Literature at the University of Sarajevo. He served for four years in the BiH Army and in the early 1990s was Secretary of the Institute for Literature in Sarajevo.
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