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DUŠAN SAVIĆ

Dušan Savić was born in 1952 in Banja Luka. His first story was published in the daily „Politika“ in March 2007. Later on, the publisher „Nezavisne Novine“ from Banja Luka published his collection of short stories Sedlo - Banja Luka from the suitcase of memories. Savić’s first novel The Vienna Giant Wheel was published in Serbian by „Treći Trg“ from Belgrade in 2009. In 2012 it was published in German by the Austrian publisher „United-p.c. Verlag; Neckenmarkt“ and in 2015 in Macedonian by the publisher „Almanah“ from Skopje. In 2019 the novel was published in Polish by „K.I.T Stowarzyszenie Żywych Poetów“ from Brzeg. The novel was proposed by the Embassy of the Republic of Serbia in Austria for the „Miloš Crnjanski Literary Award“ in 2010.

His second novel Porajmos was published by Belgrade-based publisher „Laguna“ in 2013 and was shortlisted for the „Miroslav Dereta“ Literary Award in 2013. It was also published in Macedonian and Polish in 2016. A Turkish and English edition are currently under preparation. Based on the novel's motives, a short feature film of the same title was shot in 2019. The director of the film was Gorčin Stojanović.

The third novel of Savić entitled Among the Living was published by the Institute for Textbooks and Supplement Teaching Media, Istočno Sarajevo in 2015 and in 2018 his German edition entitled Inter Vivos was published as an edition of the Austrian PEN Center. His latest novel Interstation Lisbon was published by the publisher „Dereta“ from Belgrade in 2017 and it was shortlisted for the Literary Award of the Association of Writers of the Republika Srpska in 2018. In 2019 The Sombor City Library „Karlo Bjelicki“ published the writer's book of short stories entitled On the Main Street.

Dusan Savić received his first literary prize in 2009 for his short story El Bahar at the „Simha Kabiljo“ short story competition of the Jewish Cultural Scene „Bejahad“ from Zagreb.

Savić also writes poetry. His first collection of poems − Stones Talk was published by the Bulgarian publishing house „Svetulka 44“ from Sofia in 2006.

Savić’s poetry and prose have been published in several domestic literary journals, as well as anthologies in German, Polish and Czech. His titles have been promoted in Belgrade, Sombor, Banja Luka, Vienna, the Czech Republic (in the towns of Beroun, Prague, Tetin and Krakovec) and in eleven Polish cities (like Warsaw, Krakow, Brzeg and Oświęcim).

Dusan Savić is a member of the Association of Writers of Vojvodina, the Association of Writers of Republika Srpska and the Austrian PEN Center. He lives and creates in Vienna and Sombor.

The Vienna Giant Wheel (Bečki točak, a novel)

The main characters of the novel are literature professor Nikola Mirić who comes to Vienna from Croatia at the very beginning of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, and young Austrian girl Erika Huber, an undergraduate student of literature. Fate brings them into contact after the stressful break up with former life partners and mutual desire to achieve a longlasting relationships. But, the novel is not an ordinary love story − from their acquaintance to the end, various events intertwine through the destinies of the characters. Nikola Mirić initially leads a classic struggle for survival and integration in a whole new environment among people of a different mentality, and Erica Huber faces the situation of losing her first love and the tragic death of her grandmother, the last living member of her family. The two meet each other at this point and a great and mutual love is born.

Inside the novel, there is a story in the story, a somewhat mystical search for a man whose photograph Nikola found among his late mother's belongings when leaving his parents' home. The trail takes him to Vienna where he tries to find out something about this man and only in 1996, when he first goes to Croatia, does he learn of his mother's letters and the parallel search for himself by the same unknown man who actually is his brother. He never meets him personally. In the meantime his brother dies in America and Nikola becomes a wealthy heir. He doesn't want that inheritance because he learns that his brother was financially assisting the new Croatian government in acquiring weapons.

He decides not to change anything in his life, except building a house in 'tame' Istria and when he has finished it, he takes Erika to a vacation where he proposes her a marriage. She rejects him and their relationship doesn't last because, despite their mutual love, they are equally unwilling to compromise. Erika devotes herself to her career and love for her fatherland, while Nikola stubbornly decides to stay alone in 'tame' Istria. With this act he tries to prove to himself that a whole new life is beginning despite the deep scars of the old one. After a while, an incident occurs in Istria − Nikola is physically beaten up by a group of ultranationalists which demolishe his newly furnished house. That gets him sick.

In this story, love does not win in the end, but it remains to float mysteriously in the air and wait for some more favorable wind to place it where it belongs.

Poraymos (Porajmos, a novel)

The story of the novel Porajmos is framed in three images, the fate of three Bosnian people from different backgrounds: Oscar Baranon, Sephardic Jew from Sarajevo, Ragib Sehovic, a Gypsy, and Sava Dragosavljevic, a Serb from the Banja Luka area, where all three end up in the Auschwitz concentration camp as victims of the nationalsocialist ideology about exterminating the ineligible. Their fates are closely linked to some events, places and the same people who have played an important role in their lives, from their childhood up to the very end of their lives. By some miracle, the Jew and the Serb survived the horror of the camp while the Gypsy, unfortunately, did not have the same „luck“. The story is partly fanciful, but it is basically based on true events.

Among the Living (Među živima, a novel)

Review by Sanja Macura, literary critic

The novel Among the Living by Dušan Savić is one of those reading experiences that last short, but don‘t leave you for long. Spatially scattered from Munich to Israel, this novel nevertheless, focuses on an areal bounded by Belgrade, Novi Sad, Zagreb and Sarajevo. Written concisely, dynamically and clearly, it gives the impression that there are no superfluous words in it. Many human destinies are combined to flow into one another, forming a kind of kaleidoscope.

The underlying theme that is the connective fabric of this novel is the pogrom of Jews in World War II. But the focus is not on what got them in the concentration camps, but on the life that survives out of them and that goes on for the sake of those who are gone. In front of the reader is exposed the family life preceding the war and later surviving it, being transformed into a series of micro-narratives, many of which could stand as separate literary entity. The destinies of human beings are revealed and as the reading progresses it turns out that they are all interconnected, even related by kin to each other. Circling around his characters with the eye of a seemingly objective, external narrator, the author asks the big, universal, existential question: „Does God count one's tears?“ This question has a twofold answer in each of the glances through the life windows of the characters. At first it seems that „God will no longer have the opportunity to count their tears“, and then comes the comprehension that will leave no reader indifferent − „God nevertheless counts tears!“ From this emotionally charged novel, based on the image of a family which is trying to survive, one gets the impression that love can never be excessive when given to the loved ones, because „you can not give your love to those who have left“.

Lisbon Interstation (Međustanica Lisabon, a novel)

The characters and events of the novel are spread across two continents. The action begins in stony Herzegovina, continues in central Europe and America, to finish where it began, in the village of Bjeloshev Do in eastern Herzegovina. In the poor family of Todor Gordić, in 1930, a ninth child was born and was named Milan. The boy grows up without a mother, with his father and other brothers. From the earliest days he оutstands from his peers, showing above average talent and a particular fondness for books. He retreats to his own world and enjoys solitude. Immediately before the outbreak of World War II, his shrewdness was noticed by a wealthy merchant, Joseph Miller, and he was taken to Trebinje to learn trade by him.

The boy's father senses great evil and gives the merchant the blessing of taking him to Switzerland. The boy is given a new identity, the German name Michael Miller, and continues his education there. The merchant and his wife, Marihen, accept the boy as their son. Milan quickly learns German and graduates from elementary school, grammar school and then the biotechnology college. During his studies, he is not interested in dating, only recognizes the world of books and begins to keep a diary. He completely retreats to solitude with the sole purpose of quickly completing his studies in order to pursue scientific work. In the meantime, one by one, his adoptive parents die, leaving him with a fortune. He defends his doctorate, writes scientific papers and is employed by a Swiss concern.

At a scientific conference in 1985, Americans offered him excellent conditions for further research work and he moves to New York. At his new employer, he meets a scientist, Anne Baruch, who is married to a nuclear physician and is a mother of three children. This is where the emotional drama that turns his life around the circle begins. At the age of fifty, she falls in love with a colleague. The patriarchially educated person refuses the possibility of a relationship with a married woman and begins to 'hang out' with his diary more intensely. In his spare time, as he writes a diary in his New York apartment, an alter ego emerges as an opponent, discussing the problem he first encounters, in an attempt to find a way out of the vicious circle that disturbed his loneliness. At the same time, Anne Baruch has similar feelings for her colleague, Michael Miller. She realizes that she is living in a wasted marriage with a promiscuous husband whom she rarely sees. The desire to be loved again gives birth to her maiden urges.

In 1990, Milan decides to return to his birthplace, considering it to be his only and best solution. Because he works on secret projects funded by the US state budget, he is forced to hide his tracks. Somehow, he manages to take a vacation and secretly buys a boat ticket to Lisbon from which he flies to Dubrovnik and reaches his homeland. Milan arrives in his abandoned village, repairs his abandoned house and continues his peasant business there where his biological father has stopped. At the end of the summer, 1991, a now free lady, Mrs. En, arrives in the village of Bjeloshev Do. Unfortunately, she realizes that she was too urban and could not live under the light of a petroleum lamp, without running water and at the place where sun burns the soil all over the year. She calms her innermost desire for a common life in civilization, leaves the village and returns to America.

At her departure, Milan climbs the hills and keeps looking at her while she is leaving. Hidden behind the trees he notices armed men in black uniforms descending into the village from several sides.

Along the Main Street (Glavnom ulicom, short stories)

Review by Marko Paovica, literary critic

Along the Main Street is a collection of thirty titles of the shortest narrative genre. It is distinguished by the simplicity of the narrative idiom and a dynamic and effective plotting, which captivate the reader's attention. Both are functionally aligned with the thematization of elementary existential issues such as love, death, fear, happiness and God, all experienced consciously or subconsciously from the everyday perspective of the so called ‚ordinary man‘.

The new stories of Savić can be classified into two groups: the group of fantastic and the group of psycho-realistic narrative short-form creations. Dream, Expectation, Verdict, Till the Last Letter, Photography, Crossroads, Happiness belong to the group of fantastic stories. Realistic stories include Stranger, New Year's Fair, Year 1991, Smile, Promenade Simmering‘, Pencil, A Loaf of Bread, Finished Issue, Homeless and Four Keys. They mainly refer to the events and experiences of the past three decades, both from the former Yugoslav climate and the Viennese environment. Certainly, closer to this group stands the story Mule from the row of symbolic stories about animals. In many ways it is equal to Ivo Andrić's Aska and the Wolf. The Mule is a great apotheosis of the humiliated and offended. If we were to look in the literary tradition for a possible role model for the first type of new Savić‘s stories, then this would undoubtedly be the pattern of Kafkian absurdist fiction of the short genre with its metaphysical accents. For the second model of the stories in this collection, at least for most of them, we can say that they stand evidently on Chekhov's psychologically realistic narrative trace.