Berlinsko okno

Ilić wrote this novel while he was residing in the capital as the grant holder of the Literary Colloquium Berlin (LCB). The book is concerned with the search for a person, who has disappeared in the confusion of the Yugoslavian war and who is representative of all those who disappeared in the war troubles of the 1990s. During their search the protagonists travel mainly by underground railway through the underground of Berlin, their gaze falling again and again on the so-called “Berliner Window”, the news programme in the underground railway. The title of the novel (“okno” means “window” in English, but also “shaft”), refers also however to the shaft, which literally has to be penetrated in the search for information about those who have disappeared and which can also be interpreted as memory. Berlinsko okno is therefore a novel about Berlin and at the same time a novel about the culture of memory.