Slobodan Maričić, BBC journalist
"This shelf is generally good," Sara Arsenović tells me as we approach the left corner of the Zemun Library "Sveti Sava" with the slight creak of the parquet under our feet.
"There is Dina "It's definitely somewhere, it's great - that was my first episode," he adds, as his gaze skims over a series of cracked covers.
A journalist from Radio Belgrade's Second Program, who deals with culture, has been attracting a lot of attention lately with her podcast about books. Worthy of witness.
In each episode, along with a conversation with an expert guest, he discusses one significant work, and it all started with... Dine, one of Frank Herbert's most famous science fiction novels.
"Universe" Dine "is so big and important, Herbert's heroes are tangible and alive, as if they are here with us every day, and not in the miles away worlds and planets that the writer so precisely depicted," says 30-year-old Arsenović.
Episode by episode, month by month, her podcast, produced by the Kontrast publishing house, has reached almost 120.000 followers.
And all this for stories about books and reading.
Did her success surprise her?
"Yes, I didn't expect it at all.
"We need to stop parroting the idea that people don't want this kind of content, because I think they do, the problem is that culture is often seen as inaccessible and reserved for certain circles, but it's not."
And so, while two librarians are cheering heartily for Novak Djokovic in the semifinals of the Australian Open, we are walking ours The Zemun library, where I studied for exams every day for years, and from which she often borrows books.
We talk about books, growing up, Zemun, the inevitable Harry Potter for us millennials, to her "buddy" Ernest Hemingway, to radio, podcasts, and much more.
What are books anyway, I ask her? Apart from a collection of bound pages.
"They're books," she said, then paused for a moment, her gaze thoughtful.
"The constant freshness of the world, that's someone's verse... I really think they are."
Watch: Five classics recommended by Sara Arsenović
About reading
There's something magical about libraries.
Long shelves, colorful covers, and millions of words waiting for a pair of eyes.
"This is great," I pull out a book by Terry Pratchett that says death, which is one of his best-known and most popular.
"Death is the main character, he has an existential crisis and doesn't know what to do with himself," I add.
"How good," Sara replies. "There's something about Saramago, too, when death goes on vacation."
Her face is bright, her hair is brown, and her smile is wide.
He continues to look at the shelf with fantasy in the quiet library, the air filled with the specific smell of books.
"A Solaris", he points to the dark blue cover on the top shelf.
"Oh yes, excellent," I say about Stanislav Lem's famous novel.
"That's a really good thing, but I haven't read anything else by Lem."
He especially loves Ursula le Guin, the famous American author.
"Have you read it?"
"Only The left hand is silent.", I reply, her most famous book.
"It's anthropological science fiction, you could literally imagine something like that happening anywhere in space...
"That book is my favorite thing I discovered through the podcast, I had no contact with it before and I was really thrilled."
- NIN Award winner Darko Tuševljaković on Zadar, repressed memories and past lives
- Books that marked the year 2025 for journalists from the BBC Serbian editorial office
- The Secret of Secrets: How My Buddy Dan Brown Sold 250.000.000 Books
Why is she reading at all, I ask her?
It is a form of escapism, that is, a departure from reality, he replies.
"Secondly, it's the easiest way to find confirmation for something you've thought or done, that someone has already felt the same thing, and even realized that it exists."
"For many emotions you don't know what they are, nor would you know how to put them into words, but then you see them in a book and you're like... aha, that's it, it exists."
She started reading very early, at the age of four or five - according to her mother - and her parents read to her a lot.
And he reads all sorts of things, he says.
He often changes genres, but mostly cold one classic and one contemporary book, although because of work he often doesn't have time to read what he wants to.
He loves memoirs and keeps coming back to poetry.
"I love it, it's like a reboot of prose, I don't know how to explain it."
"The only problem is that you can't read it in every state of consciousness, you have to be somehow isolated from the world, it's not really for reading on the bus."
He singles out Milena Marković and Dragana Mladenović, as well as the popularity of Marko Tomaš.
"The best thing to do is take it on vacation and ingest poetry little by little," he believes.
"Ayooj," a librarian exclaimed at that moment somewhere in the background.
It's tense in Melbourne.
- Where and to whom to donate old books in Serbia
- What does purchasing books in Cyrillic mean for libraries and readers?
- Bibliotherapy: "By reading a book, we read ourselves"
About growing up
From the shelf with fantasy, in the far left corner of the library, right next to the entrance, we randomly enter one of the rows.
"This is Serbian literature," says Sara.
We pass by a series of famous names - Andrić, Rain, Selimović and others.
"I just saw a book by Žarko Radaković, our Zemunac native, do you know about him?"
"Handkeov "is a friend and translator," says Arsenović after a brief tour.
"There is also Albahari", that's the Zemun team of writers, it's nice to have them in the Zemun Library," he adds.
Just like when she talks about books, there is warmth in her voice as soon as she mentions the Belgrade municipality of Zemun, where she grew up and where she lives.
Some would say city of Zemun, but let's not get into these territorial disputes now.
He is very important to her in every sense, she points out.
It's from Ćukovac - one of the three Zemun hills, for you vanzemunce, along Gardoš and Kalvarija - she went to the "Lazar Savatić" Elementary School on the quay, then to the Zemun Gymnasium.
"I could never leave here, being from Zemun is literally the most important point of identification and identity for me."
"If I could, I would just move Radio Belgrade from the center to Zemun," she laughs.
Let me tell you right away, I am a representative of the Zemun diaspora - I live in New Belgrade - so I know very well what Sara is talking about.
My godmother used to say, "You know where I've been to the doctor - even in Belgrade."
"Well, that's us," Arsenović shrugs.
Watch the video: 'Don Quixote of Gardoš', which preserved Zemun's history
He describes growing up as "the most beautiful thing in the world", filled with books.
"I can't say, but I loved this as a kid," she says with a smile when we reach Mir Jam and her violet from the beginning of the 20th century, which was further popularized by Zdravko Šotra through television series.
"Guilty pleasure?", I ask her, using an expression that can be translated as "secret pleasure," and denotes enjoyment in something that may not be of such high quality or socially valued.
"Absolutely. I love both the book and the series," he replies.
"He's mine, Dan Brown," I acknowledged back.
- Mir-Jam: The proven and popular queen of romance novels
- Bora Stanković, a writer who understood women
- 'Prince of Poetry' Branko Miljković: Young, brilliant, but also with a tragic fate
Her teenage years were also marked by books from the series Shopaholic, the recently deceased Sophie Kinsella, Twilight Saga Stephenie Meyer, while remembering the first book that moved her brain Impure blood Bore Stanković.
"My mom made me take her on vacation, it shook me up terribly, although I certainly didn't understand her like I do today...
"I almost read it again."
There are also Fairy tales of the peoples of the world, primarily Japanese, Shalabingo Slovak writer Milan Ferko and Six-month-old girl Roberto Rico.
But before and after all, one name - Harry Potter.
If you could interview one character from the world of Hogwarts and the dark dementors on a podcast, who would it be?
She thought for a moment, first mentioning Professor Snape, then Headmaster Dumbledore "because of his life experience," and finally saying that Lupin "would be interesting."
"Unless it's a full moon," I interject (Lupin is a werewolf).
"Yes," he nods.
In the end, she chooses Harry's godfather, Sirius Black, because her favorite part is the third one - Prisoner of Azkaban - in which he first appears.
I also ask her which of the four Hogwarts houses she's in, to which she proudly says Gryffindor, and who her crush from that world was (like Hermione was to all of us).
"Harry and Ron never, maybe Cedric Diggory at some point," he says shortly, but then laughs and still points out Viktor Krum from Durmstrang, a rival school to Hogwarts, whose students are depicted as...
"Well, a bit of a tricky, dangerous and dark type."
"I'm from Zemun after all," he says with a broad smile.
- Terry Pratchett - silliness and absurdity as criticism and mirror of society
- On the 'father of epic fantasy': Why Tolkien's stories are still so popular around the world
- "The Queen of Crime": The Mystery of the Centennial Popularity of Agatha Christie's Stories
Watch the video: "Go to Lido" - a story about the Zemun sea and a grandmother
About the radio
For a few minutes we just walk through the shelves and, with our heads tilted, now to the left, now to the right, in accordance with the inscriptions on the covers, we look at the books.
It's quiet.
For a while, nearby, and actually worlds away, behind rows and rows of books, a woman walks, her movements so precisely revealed by the parquet floor that I know exactly where she is at any given moment.
And the librarians can be heard in the background - it's 2:2 in Melbourne, the fifth set is underway.
"I've always wanted to read this, but I never have," I say, pointing to Miodrag Bulatović and his books. Crveni petao leti prema nebu i People with four fingers, for which he received the NIN Award.
"I don't understand how Kusturica never made a film about To the red rooster, "It's the most wonderful carnival of our literature," says Sara.
A few days earlier, she recorded a show with Darko Tuševljaković, the new winner of the NIN award, who in the meantime also talked about BBC in Serbian.
"Do you feel the need to read something about a book when you finish it?" he asks me.
Absolutely, I answer, but I mostly watch video reviews on YouTube.
Or Worth the Story.
But Arsenović reached him via radio, so we have to tell that story first.
She arrived at Radio Belgrade in 2016 for an internship, completely by chance, says the 30-year-old, who has since completed her studies in journalism and media production at the Faculty of Media and Communications, where she is pursuing a master's degree.
Does she believe in coincidences, I ask her?
"No, no way," he replies.
"It was by chance, because I didn't believe I would stay, but after a while you realize that you feel at home, and that you should have come here."
- What is hidden under the sand of "Dine": a story that changed the world
- On psychohistory and freedom: What "The Endowment" teaches us and why everyone should read it
- See you in your dreams: The story of Sandman, the "comic alphabet" that changed the world
The author of the show is In the first five i Kulturni krugovand, dedicated to culture, the importance of which she has spoken about in almost all of her previous interviews.
Culture "must not be a two-minute decoration at the end of shows," she said.
And while she talks about the radio, the same tone and radiance can be heard in her voice as when she talks about Zemun and books.
Her mother, also a journalist for Radio Belgrade, had often told her about "the magic of radio, from which it's hard to escape," and she was right, she says.
What is the magic?
On the radio, only the voice is used, so people can "bare themselves like nowhere else," he believes.
That's why she was "a little scared" when she started recording the podcast, which is in video format, which means cameras, lighting, and more exposure.
"The voice is such a delicate thing that you can always hear on the radio whether someone is happy, sad, excited, nervous or bored about the interview."
"The image masks it, but when it's just a voice, you can hear everything... I think I can hear my colleagues when they haven't had enough sleep."
Much, he adds, is also tied to the Radio Belgrade building.
"I have a lot of attachment to spaces in general, and that's how I feel about this library."
"Have you ever been back there?" he asks me, pointing to the door at the end of the room.
No, let's go.
About the podcast
"I took the old edition from here." Vuk's dictionary"You know how good it was," he says as we enter the back of the library.
The labels on the shelves clearly indicate what they are about - literary theory, geography, political science, and various other sciences.
Let's look around in silence for a bit.
Which podcast episode is she most proud of, I ask her?
"That's hard for me to say."
Okay, are there at least some favorites?
He points out that one of his favorites is Vuk's dictionary, including Hamlet.
"We talked about the entire history of English theatre, because without what theatre represented at that moment you can't understand the phenomenon." Hamlet. "
She also worked on a series of religious books - Koran, The Old Testament, New Testament, Talmud i Tora, and she is especially fond of Mahabharata i Ramajana- which she approached as texts and analyzed what was actually written there.
In the meantime, there were various episodes.
From classics like Dostoevsky, Andrić, Selimović, to contemporary stories like My genius friends Elena Ferrante and various fantasies, such as Do androids dream of electric sheep Filipa K. Dika, do Dositej Obradović, Saint Sava and Gorski vienci.
- Desanka Maksimović, a poet who wrote until her last breath
- The experiences of Branko Ćopić - about the garden, heresy and the last offensive
- Slobodan Tisma for the BBC: "We must not set any boundaries in art, if we do something, then we go to the limit"
Za Worthy of witness First of all, he says that they are "about the love of literature."
He insists on talking about everything in simple terms, as well as on questions "that everyone understands, regardless of profession."
"That's the most important thing in the world to me, to keep the conversation serious enough, but also understandable," he points out.
"It's not true that people don't want culture and books, you just have to find a space to offer it to them in a way that is appropriate for the contemporary moment."
Podcasting is one of those forms, he adds.
"I have a high school student named Lenka who follows the show and I really like her, even though we've never met, we just correspond."
"She almost wrote to me: 'Come on, please do it.'" Anna Karenina"I need it for reading," he adds with a smile.
And then - an eruption.
"AAAaaaa," comes the sound from the other end of the library.
At the end of the long shelves and books, behind their desk, the librarians hug each other.
"He was broken by Djokovic. in the fifth set," they shout at us.
The Zemun library is going crazy in a trance.
Watch the video: All the secrets of Zoran Đinđić's personal library
A little more about books
The walk through books and worlds continued for some time.
He loves very much. Don Quixote, she pointed out when we came across it on one of the shelves on the right, calling it "one of the saddest books in the world."
"As funny as he is, it's so hard and heartbreaking for me," he says.
I don't know, I tried reading it twice and gave up.
Although she is not a fan of his books, Ernest Hemingway calls him "buddy" and would like to sit down for a drink with him.
"He must have been a difficult man, but imagine how interesting it would be if he told the stories of his life's experiences, both terrible and wonderful."
"I've always loved that heightened presence of life and passion in literature, when it just pours out of the pages - that's how Bulatović's Crveni petao leti prema nebu", it has no end, the red color flows from page to page, incredibly complete."
- Ernest Hemingway: The adventurer who discovered what lies beneath the iceberg
- How to overcome work paralysis like Ernest Hemingway
- "The King of Horror": Five Not-So-Known Books by Stephen King You Shouldn't Miss
A few seconds later he pauses to speak to Cormac McCarthy.
He particularly emphasizes his Blood meridian, in which he is "one of the greatest devils of American literature."
"I was just reading Put, "which was brilliant, although afterwards I wanted to curl up in the fetal position under the shower," I say.
She is not a lover either. Stephen King, who is quietly waiting for readers nearby.
"As nice as it is to have a job where I read books, watch plays, and watch movies, you know how hard it is for me not to be able to read what I want anymore," Sara says quietly.
He reads what he has to, he emphasizes, there is no choice.
"Last year, it happened to me for the first time that I didn't read a single page at sea - where I usually read the fastest - even though I brought three or four books."
So, what is Novak doing?
"Aaaaah," was heard at that very moment.
Siner led 40:0 on Djokovic's serve, but Novak wins the game and confirms the break, we received a library summary.
We were also informed when the match point was, and especially when he won.
"Bravo, wow, what did I say!" shouts the librarian.
The magic of libraries, what are you going to do?
"Wow, this one is great," I show Sarah the book on the left.
"Have you read?"
Watch the video: Bibliobus - on a tour of Aleksinac villages with books on wheels
BBC is in Serbian from now on and on YouTube, follow us HERE.
Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram i Viber. If you have a topic suggestion for us, please contact bbcnasrpskom@bbc.co.uk
- A Serbian scientist reveals the secrets of Shakespeare's poisons
- Literary clubs in Serbia: Freedom without academic seriousness
- Interview on Fridays with Uroš Dimitrijević: "Boards", the growing up of a millennial
- Jovan Jovanović Zmaj: A poet who teaches and heals for more than a century
- Rastko Petrović: Poet, visionary and Belgrader in the heart of Africa
- Between sleep and death: Who was the Serbian poet Vladislav Petković Dis?
Bonus video:
