Our great ethnographer Tihomir Đorđević states that the “tuđa kost” syntagm was often used by people to describe females in the household – newly arrived, but also ones already at home. This motive of an”alien” among its own, backward patriarchal through social perception, but also the generational heritage, is the backbone of this novel.
The three stories, the main heroes and her two grandmothers, are intertwined in the even order of most of the novels. In this way, the author chooses important points and real parallels, how genetic / cultural heritage is reflected through descendants. Which patterns are unconsciously repeated, and which ones are consciously violated?
Although there is a chronology of events in the novel, the structure is not kept consistently, but the selection of important events from the life of the heroine is elliptical and selected to show the turning points of the emotional development of character. The choice of Savić that the main course of the action is written in the first person, contributes to the confessional tone of the novel, the empathy with the heroine, and the subtle tingling of the language that is achieved. It is precisely this language which preserves the style within the limits of the sensual and the reduced, and even when the writing is about intimacy or earthquakes, it does not slip into the pathetic.
About the author
Sanja Savic was born in Sarajevo in 1988. She graduated and finished her master studies at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, where she is currently a attending PHD studies.
She published the short story collections Kad Žirafa progrovori (2010) and Vrijeme vašara (2013), novel Neoštrine (2016), drama Srebrni car (2017) and drama collection Ptice i druge drame (2019). She wrote and directed two short animated films, and a feature film Our Fathers, Mothers and Their Children (2017). At the Cultural Institution Vuk Stefanović Karađžić, a drama called Kod šejtana ili Jedna dobra žena (2018) was performed.
The book launch will feature a panel that includes:
Sanja Savić, author
Ana Marija Grbić, editor
Muharem Bazdulj, writer
Vule Žurić, writer