Jergović, Miljenko – Zagreb Chronicles
2010, pp. 315
Price: 800 RSD ($11)
About the author
Miljenko Jergović was born in 1966 in Sarajevo. Since 1993, he has been a resident of Zagreb. He is a prose writer, a poet and an essayist. He engaged in journalism during the second half of the nineties. His newspaper articles were published in te following books: Finding good Manners (Naći bonton, Yagreb 1998); Victims dreaming of a Great Victory in War (Žrtve sanjaju veliku ratnu pobedu, , Zagreb 2006; Readings in History (Historijska čitanka, Sarajevo 2001); and Readings in History 2 (Sarajevo – Zagreb 2004).
PLACE AND TIME OF PUBLICATION
All the texts in this book were written for newspapers. The first one, ”Can One Be a Muslim”, was first published under the same title in Jutarnji list (The Morning Paper), in its issue of Saturday, September 22 2001 11 days after the assault on WTC. It was followed by texts, written every week for Jutarnjui list (generally, for its Saturday issues), and for Globus (The Globe). The last one, entitled ”Krleža ili poslednji hrvatski Atenjanin” (Krleža ‘ The Last Croatian Athenian), was originally printed in Globus on December 29, 2006.
The exception are two texts:
”Žena koja je spaljivala veštice” (The Woman who Burned Witches), a column written for Globus, but refused by it.
”Stihovi za pomirenje” (Verses for a Reconciliation), an article printed in the Podgorica (Montenegro) based newspaper Pobjeda (Victory) on the occasion of the 12th anniversary of the Dubrovnik campaign by the Yugoslav People’s Army and voluteers from Montenegro. I have thereby broken my general resolution not to include in this book texts published outside Croatia (between 2001 and 2006 I had published articles in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Germany, and Italy), which I made for sentimental reasons. (Even though my views are the same wherever I publish a text, there are variations in style and emotional intensity among my writings, according to which group of readers they were written for). I made the exeption to my resolution by including Verses for Recociliation, because I was pleased to end that article with a poem by Milan Milišić, a Serbian and a Croatian, but in fact, a Dubrovnik poet.
The texts in this book are not ordered chronologically, but rather thematically. For that reason, the original publication dates are indicated only for the first and the last of them.
M. J.