Ovdje neće biti čuda

Although capitalism is promising one miracle after another, there won’t be any in postwar Yugoslavia. Bender, who fled the civil war and now lives elsewhere, returns for the first time to the destroyed village of his childhood. His father, who remained in Croatia, has called him: Bender’s mother has disappeared and he needs to help him find her. Laconically, with dark humour, yet precise language, Goran Ferčec describes the men’s daily routines in search of the mother. Father and son are incapable of finding words for their suffered traumas and their loss. Their sparse dialogue could as easily be lifted from an absurd theatre play by Beckett. Rarely one stumbles upon a book that dissects the senselessness of war with such restraint as well as subtle humour.