Pas i kontrabas

It seems impossible to summarize in a novel the entire paradox of the destruction of the former Yugoslavia. But the author Saša Ilić solves it through the story of nineteen-year-old Filip Isaković who after a long time on the warship JRM, in the autumn of 1991, was found in front of the island of Lošinj. At that time, it was the last scent of paradise because the entire space of the former Yugoslavia was overtaken by the darkness of war and the whole country would be flooded by blood. Two decades later, a former war veteran and jazz contrabast, already mentally and almost physically destroyed and who can no longer play, is escorted to a psychiatric hospital in Kovino, where he meets those who were abandoned by the state, after using them shamefully for his wars.

The reader travels through the time and space of Yugoslavia to the heart of the novel: Where the philosophy of liberating a society trapped in the jaws of the war past and the realization that freedom does not come through oblivion shows the great idea that we cannot heal the individual unless we cure society before.