Semper idem

Semper idem is Ðorđe Lebović’s magnum opus: it is a novel about his childhood in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia on the eve of the Second World War, a deeply felt testimony that is part of the canon of contemporary Serbian literature, not only because of its subject matter, but above all because of the author’s unique narrative style. Lebović not only focuses on the looming ‘Great Catastrophe’, rampant National Socialism and its consequences, but also draws parallels between the madness of the past and the war that flared up in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, devastating the country and causing it to fall apart. Lebović lost forty family members in the Holocaust and experienced the hell of Auschwitz himself at the tender age of 14.