New book Nine Vuksanovic, "Devil's Saint", using an oxymoron already in the title, reveals that the protagonist is actually determined by the contradiction of her psychological profile, and that the psychological structure of her character is very complex, the author explains in an interview with Vijesti.
"The title of the novel is a suggestion and a kind of confirmation of the contradictions and inconsistencies of the heroine's moral dilemmas, questions of identity, personal choices and the state of her inner world," says Vuksanović.
That "Devil's Saint" in the novel is the main character, Marija, who addresses the reader in the first person, and the author, as she states, wanted to contribute to a more intense emotional reading experience of this stormy character. Vuksanović further zooms in on her profile...
"Frauds and materialistic urges are a humiliating reality for her, and she considers prostitution pure, because no one cheats anyone there. Contradictory thoughts as a reflection of her interior helped me to create her character so that it would be as complex and interesting to read as possible. The heroine is actually a controversial character. With her character and thoughts, I wanted to present to the reader that in every person there are contradictions in their own being, the reasons of which should be sought in the period of childhood, because from a pedagogical point of view, childhood is considered the starting point of life", says Vuksanović.
The main character has her own set of attitudes, she points out that she doesn't like the hypocrisy she finds everywhere, she doesn't like superficial things and conversations, she doesn't want to put up with anything or anyone, she can't stand for a married woman to be abused and reduced to a housemaid, she defends women , and at the same time confronts internalized misogyny, believes that prostitution is more honorable than fraud, because no one lies to anyone there, calls out materialists and their split from reality. Sometimes he says something, then refutes it... Vuksanović explains it further...
"Through the synthesis of dualism, that is, the incongruity of the main character's thoughts and actions, this reading reveals the complexity of her inner world, which can be sensational to the reader at the very beginning of reading, because it deals with human emotions and internal conflicts," he says.
She adds that she formed the character of Mary through her religious belief, that is, her religiosity. He states that the significance of the role of God in Mary's life is undeniably enormous and that this is reflected in several fragments of the novel.
"Mary confirms through personal examples of encounters with God that he is actually her guiding thought, a guide to correctness and a reliable guardian on the path of her existence. Darja and Radmila are trying to distance Maria from God with atheism so that her faith does not lead her to fanaticism and exclusivity", adds the author, thus introducing the readers of Vijesta to other characters of her work.
Speaking about the roots of Marija's rage towards the female and male sex, Vuksanović says that they rest and date back to the period of her early girlhood "when she was first disappointed in love and lost faith in it forever".
"The foundations of her disappointment lie in the dysfunctional family in which she grew up, then in social expectations, war traumas and numerous emotional disappointments. I see the culprit of the rich and complex portrait of the main character in the negative influence of her parents on her life, cold family relations that were not an adequate model of upbringing, which later in life represents a relevant problem in her personal choices and attitudes", adds the author of "Devil's Saints".
She also admits to the news that she had an inner motivation to write this book.
"The impetus to create this short work that was smoldering in my interior is actually injustices, pain, unspoken human traumas, misunderstanding of differences and breaking taboos. My ideas and goals were to emotionally and expressively provide a deep emotional experience for the reader through Maria's written word, but also through secondary characters who marked her life, which will help him connect with her experiences and feelings. I believe that readers who like stories dealing with human emotions and internal conflicts will find this reading interesting," said Vuksanović.
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