Balša Brković's new novel "Aurora" has just been published by the publishing house "Nova knjiga" from Podgorica, and will soon be in front of readers in their bookstores.
The reviewer Aleksandar Bečanović points out that "Aurora" in many ways represents the pinnacle of the author's novelistic adventure.
Recalling his previous novels "Private Gallery", "Paranoia in Podgorica" and "Imelda Markos Beach", Bečanović observes that the motifs, themes, details, which are present in them, have already experienced an exceptional degree of creative realization, and here they are additionally stylized and enriched...
"Which is why 'Aurora' can function, even in retrospect, as a point where the author's main preoccupations brilliantly meet, while the author's recognizable narrative position - which masterfully combines the 'lightness' of storytelling and the seriousness of the points made - is even more mature and precise ", emphasizes Bečanović.
Brković takes readers on an exciting journey to the past that happened or to the past that could have happened, Bečanović points out and adds that the author as a reliable guide uses narrative strategies that he seems to have taken from particularly inspiring chess games.
Picturesque and cinematically described scenes, authentic characters, original and interesting dialogues, beautiful narration, with a passion for chess and football, as well as art, but also timeless characters such as Tino Ujević, Radovan Zogović, Milovan Đilas, chess player Bora Kostić, Metropolitan Dožić, etc. and a number of others, real or imagined, contribute to the creation of the spirit and atmosphere of Podgorica during the thirties of the last century.
"Like the previous three novels, 'Aurora' is a novel about Podgorica, about the city that Brković always profiles as a topos that stands on the border between the mythical and the real, real enough to identify its contours and characters, fantastic enough to understand that, after all, behind everything is the writer's description, vision and imagination. However, unlike 'Private Gallery' and 'Paranoia' in Podgorica, which are set in contemporary Podgorica, 'Aurora' looks back at Podgorica from the XNUMXs: that city is revealed in Brković's novel in an unexpected, different way (among other things , and with the help of chess and football), but at the same time the writer leaves enough indicative traces for us to notice the same ambivalences, problems and dilemmas that are characteristic of our time", notes Bečanović.
Following the plot, which encompasses a series of different events of a romanticized everyday life, through frames that move the reader from space to space, one gets to know a constellation of personalities, along with inevitable originals, the intellectual elite, sports enthusiasts, iconic restaurateurs, refined ladies who, in different ways, slowly but surely , find their way and occupy an important place in (and not so strictly) patriarchal society. With political circumstances that, it seems, have not changed drastically, it is easy to draw a parallel with today...
All this comes before the reader on more than 380 pages of a book with a beautiful cover, the design of which was in charge of Irena Milačić.
"In order to tell a story, sometimes you have to see more than what is in the picture. When you look, you see what the light illuminates, but you know nothing about what is under the light...", is the first sentence of Balša Brković in the novel "Aurora", after which the train moves and the tape unwinds.
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