The Banquet in Blitva

The Banquet in Blitva: A Novel in Three Books (Banket u Blitvi: roman u tri knjige) is a political novel by Miroslav Krleža. The story takes place in the fictitious northeastern European nation of Blitva, which, after centuries of foreign rule and political instability, has become a newly independent state under a dictatorship headed by Colonel Kristian Barutanski. The novel is generally regarded as a satire of interwar Yugoslavia.

Structure
The novel is split up into three books, narrated by an observer "from a distant and foggy foreign country". The first two parts of the novel deal with the political situation in Blitva and two figures present in the country: Colonel Barutanski, its dictator, and Niels Nielsen, an intellectual and dissident. The third part reflect on Nielsen's life as a dissident, including his personal doubts and past actions. The first two parts were published in 1938 and 1939, respectively, but, due to political pressure, Krleža did not publish the last part until the 1960s. Only the first two parts of have been translated into English.

Themes
The book has been described as a satire of "eastern European backwardness and western European decadence" and a critique of rising fascist sympathies in interwar Yugoslavia. Other writers, such as Miroslav Vaupotić, have compared the events in the novel to Józef Piłsudski's Poland.