Literature from Slovenia: Father or son – who is more scared?

He’s back: Marko Đorđić is back with his parents in Fužine, the prefabricated housing district in Ljubljana where mainly workers from the other former Yugoslav republics live. Marko, the first-person narrator, was gone – for ten years. His parents had sent him to live with his relatives in Bosnia because he was a nuisance in Slovenia as a “chefur” and couldn’t get anything done other than making shit; the path to prison was mapped out.

Now he is back with the “skiers”, having fled from Bosnia, where he had persuaded a mafioso with the best connections into politics. And in other ways, your parents’ country wasn’t exactly the place to rethink your life. But Marko discovered something in Visoko, Bosnia: he fell in love with Alma. She, a Muslim Bosnian woman, he, the Serb-Bosnian guest worker’s son from Fužine. This couldn’t go well. His family didn’t want to and sent him away from Visoko to the next town. And then Marko himself was unable to show his love for Alma. When he then left her suggestion of going abroad together unanswered, it was over.

Bosnia was still a place of longing in the previous novel “Tschefuren raus!” Now the verdict is that Bosnia is not a country at all, “but an area where unfortunately people live. Not even living, just being there.” The question of home remains open, and with it the question of one’s own identity. Sometimes it’s something physical, and so Vojnović places the action during the 2017 European Basketball Championship. “If you don’t jump, you’re not a Slovenian” becomes an expression of belonging, but also a provocation towards the Serbian friends in Bosnia.

Things are even more complicated with the seemingly fixed ethnic classifications abroad. This becomes clear when you look at Marko’s friends. Dejan, who once wanted to be the greatest Serb of all, now lives in a sleepy Slovenian provincial town. He has become so assimilated externally and internally that his old friends can only make fun of him. Their fate is no less tragic: Aco is in prison more than he is free. And Adi lives with his now deeply religious brother and his completely veiled wife, with the drugs controlling him more than before.

So now Fužine again. The neighborhood had changed since Marko left. More Slovenes moved here, and the Chefurs without money had to give way to them. You could call it gentrification. The Đorđić family has to contend with even more threatening problems. Father Radovan – clever when he talks – has a tumor. The patriarch doesn’t want to admit that. This doesn’t make things easy for mother Ranka, so she sinks into self-pity.

Marko finds it all difficult to bear – as he actually finds it all quite difficult to bear. For example, when he wants to take Radovan to the hospital for an operation, but he leaves the house before him. Both men wander through the corridors of the oncology ward, fearful of how the procedure will turn out. Marko remembers how his father visited him in Bosnia to talk him out of the relationship with Alma. It was also about the fact that a Serb cannot be with the daughter of a Muslim who had probably burned down the local Orthodox church.

The father still wants to be in charge, but actually he is also afraid of his own life. The unacknowledged tumor is a symbol of a masculinity that promises nothing good and has no answers for the future: »Two shits, that’s Radovan and me. But no one knows which one is bigger.” These sentences were translated into German by Klaus Detlef Olof. He is one of the most prominent translators of the Yugoslavian languages, who has also made Vojnović’s other works available through Folio Verlag, not least through the classifying comments on Slovenian politics and society. For his translation of “18 Kilometers to Ljubljana” from Slovenian, Olof was rightly nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in the translation category.

In “Tschefuren raus!”, Goran Vojnović’s debut and breakthrough in Slovenia, it was still very direct and in-your-face, but the language has now become more thoughtful. Not that the aggression has gone away, but there is now also a level of reflection. Furthermore, circumstances have changed. In Slovenia, the enemy image “Tschefur” has lost its appeal; other groups such as refugees must now serve as self-assurance for the majority. Marko Đorđić has not only gotten older, he has picked up some of life’s pitfalls – he has gained experience, you could say. But he remains searching and emotionally closed when it comes to communicating with those around him. He prefers to remain silent – the women who want something from him tend to call it cowardice. With him, Goran Vojnović has created a character that portrays a generation and has the potential for an entire series of novels.

Goran Vojnović: 18 Kilometer encore Ljubljana. A. d. Slow. in Klaus Detlef Olof. Folio-Verlag, 319 S., paperback, €26.