At the meeting held on January 5, the jury, consisting of Alexander Jerkov (president), Adriana Marchetić, Tamara Mitrović, Vladimir Gvozden i Mladen Vesković, he selected ten titles for the shortlist, it was announced today.
We list them in the order of their arrival in the NIN editorial office and with a few words about the book that has accompanied them almost since they appeared among readers.
Shortlisted novels:
1. "Five fat poets" - Predrag Đurić "Raštan publishing house"
2. "Boiler" - Jovica Acin „Laguna“
3. "A bird flies along a sharp knife" - Tanja Stupar Trifunović "Laguna"
4. "Now I'm wandering the world dead" - Borivoj Gerzić "Rende Books", Belgrade
5. "Shoot into space" - Vladislav Bajac "Geopoetics Publishing"
6. "Empty houses" - Danka Ivanovic "Partisan Book"
7. “NGDL” Marinko Arsić Ivkov, Niš Cultural Center
8. "Tin coffin for Zejna Zaimović" - Muharem Bazdulj "Cosmos", Belgrade
9. "Sand of the sandbox" - Milenko Bodirogić "Orfelin publishing house", Novi Sad
10. “Return” - Goran Petrovic „Laguna“
"Five fat poets" - Predrag Đurić
"A river is water and a river is strength, a river is life and sometimes death, a river is a mother and a river is a sister, a river is a path, and for some a goal; you live on the river, you live from the river, you live with the river, and someone in it and on it; the river prays, it also curses, I fear the river even when I love it, the river is limes, the river is a dam...", is written in the first lines of the novel "Five fat poets" by Predrag Đurić ("Raštan Publishing House").
Experts note that it is a tribute to the lost generation of young people from the end of the 20th century, but also a book about Vojvodina, about the fragments of that special and unique cultural space scattered over the centuries, its deep layers and furrows that are barely visible today, like wrinkles that are believed to have always existed on the face. They state that Đurić, through his heroes, portrays the character types that have created the current society devoid of solidarity and empathy - arrogant, cruel, lustful, envious, lazy and inert, barren idealists and unscrupulous people. That is, as if the actors of this story decided to take advantage of a world where the rules don't apply, where there are no borders or restrictions and checks, how much more we will watch them from the side, turning our heads or shrugging our shoulders.
"Cauldron" - Jovica Aćin
"Each big coast seems to have its own time, which is not the time of the land, but neither the time of the water or the sea. Anyone who has walked along the shores long enough can eventually recognize the strait of time which simply steals its force from the tight embrace of two powerful forces that created and pressed it", is written on the last pages of the novel "Cauldron" by Jovica Aćin ("Laguna") with with the subtitle "Operetta about miracles with a misunderstood traveler", which marks, as it is pointed out, the fact that the search for the truth about others always leads to the discovery of the truth about the one who trace. It is known for an intriguing, enthralling psychothriller in which a seductive presentation of data and a story celebrating life and love culminate in a shocking twist.
"A bird flies along a sharp knife" - Tanja Stupar Trifunović
"It's too quiet and time passes slowly, ghosts and fairies walk around the village at night, you can come across something you don't need, something from other worlds, and then you walk somewhere else, absent and bewitched, that can happen to you if you're not careful . Walking through the village is like walking backwards in time, the holes of the past are constantly opening into which it is easy to fall into", is written on the exhalation of the first chapter of the novel "A bird flies along a sharp knife" by Tanja Stupar Trifunović ("Laguna").
Experts note that it is exciting when a poet writes a novel, and a NIN laureate Stevo Grabovac says: "One could say that this is a novel about growing up in times that are suitable for everything but growing up. About women who matured too quickly, facing their fears and destinies. There is also the army, strange and black, but there is also the sea, always seductive as it knows how to be. There are also the first uncertain loves, there are also the first temptations and the first burdens of femininity, imposed in the wild and treacherous stages of time in which men write history. And this unknown and invisible history, more important than the one we will learn later in school, is written honestly and cleanly, convincingly and poignantly, just as life itself is.
"I am now wandering the world dead" - Borivoje Gerzić
"But there is a button, a thread, a mechanism, where it all started, with people and their destinies, without the uterus. Or not. Suppose there is. The thread, not the uterus. The divine womb. Something similar, imperceptible but persistent. Let this confuse our minds a little", is written at the bottom of the first page of the novel "I'm wandering dead in the world" by Borivoj Gerzić ("Rende"), the subtitle of which is "Chronicle of Death and Folly".
A Milena Markovic, laureate of NIN's award, notes: "I am wandering now dead in the holy, a hero sings to you of eternal joy and eternal torment. A novel of frenzied language and an overflowing heart, a novel of screams and silence, a novel about the beginning, non-beginning, end, never-ending, interweaving, despair and ecstasy. A novel about death and desire, meaninglessness and heaven, without fear and lies. A novel of a surviving dead man, a man, a great man who wields the Promethean fire of truth and knowledge.
Over time, the same is transferred to the swollen limb.
Then he says, Lord, why have you forsaken me.
There he is again, the sad knight walking through the meadow.
To become a god you have to close your eyes, he says.
And I say the great thing is written, cognitive, meaningful, playful in the melancholy of the abyss, headstrong, wise to heaven, innocent. Written by the many-faced man writer."
"Point blank shot" - Vladislav Bajac
"Who pulled his tongue when and why for the first time, he wondered, convinced that it all started from that. And actually, everything started from a misunderstanding", are the first two sentences in the novel "Pucanj u prašno" by Vladislav Bajc ("Geopoetics").
The novel is also famous for being a kaleidoscope book, the parts of which are assembled into a different whole at every moment, creating a multitude of exciting reading experiences. In words Zoran Paunović, is created from different literary genres: autobiography and narrative prose, poetry and historiographical metafiction, travelogue and essay, as well as many other forms of literary expression, all of which together form a solid novel form. "The story about the completely personal doubts and realizations, doubts and epiphanies of the narrator and the main character V. is at the same time a monumental picture of the bleak demise of the twentieth century, in which numerous unknown, half-known and famous characters are connected by a heroic effort to live in a world illuminated by the deceptive light of media spotlights find and preserve a glimmer of that true, inner light. This is also the story of the last decade, when we could still believe that New York was a suburb of Belgrade, about fragile ideals and powerful delusions, about a long journey into historical dead-ends from which there may be no way out," notes Paunović.
"Empty houses" - Danka Ivanović
"Even a goat would starve on the land I inherited. I judge based on the valleys I know. That part of the country that I'm too lazy to look for on the website of the 'Real Estate Administration' is much larger. Someone paid for that same land with their spine, rotten teeth pulled out alive, strokes in broad daylight, hernias that made you die, because you didn't go to the doctor out of shame. Now, I can't even get there because of the brambles, wolves, foxes, međes, pits and sinkholes. I'm afraid of my 'lada'", wrote Danka Ivanović in her first novel, "Empty Houses" ("The Partisan Book").
Those in the know point out that it is hyper-modernist, written with a lot of linguistic mastery and intertextual richness, while it is neither tedious nor hermetic, but, imbued with humor, it is easy to read. The title, as noted, symbolizes many things - an echo of the past, women, mothers and grandmothers, who carried the burden of life and built small moments of happiness within the male-female paradigm, often in the shadows. The novel, they say, gives voice to exactly that silence and emptiness, filling it with emotional nuances, introspections and images of life that leave a strong impression.
"NGDL" - Marinko Arsić Ivkov
"And of all the people I met in the occupied and liberated territories, I remember Emil most often. Since he 'secretly' brought my corpse and me alive at the same time, I haven't seen him again. Did he choose one of his two professions, or did he find a third? For some people, war offers much more than peace", is written near the end of the novel "NGDL" by Marinka Arsić Ivkova (Niš Cultural Center), the first chapter of which has the indicative title "The Endless Blue Circle. Nothing in it".
It is known for being provocative and introspective, a novel that takes us on a journey through essential dilemmas - are we the ones who search or are we the ones who haunt. Modernity is a kind of background of an unusual story in which the boundaries between the outside world and internal questioning are erased. "NGDL", as noted, opens up the question of identity and meaning through a poetic rhythm, reminding us that sometimes it is enough to stare into the endless blue sky to find the answers. It is also added that it is an invitation to an introspective search for oneself, a book that reminds that happiness is not in the outcome of the search, but in the very process of searching.
"Tin coffin for Zejna Zaimović" - Muharem Bazdulj
"That Zenica of the eighties, from when I was growing up, was a miracle. Until a hundred years ago, literally just a century ago, we were a celandine next to your Travnik. Then Austria came, built an ironworks and everything changed. Uncle Marx is right, and it is easy to understand him there, whether or not he has heard of Hegel; work created man. It is true that Momo Škulj used to say: 'Work made a man, and idleness made a gentleman', but even that was just a thesis and an antithesis. Meaningful work created a gentleman, it's a synthesis, that's how I think today", wrote Muharem Bazdulj on the tenth page of the novel "Tin Coffin for Zeimović Zejna" ("Cosmos").
Connoisseurs draw attention to the fact that, like a prose kaleidoscope, with a lot of poetic power, it also acts as a continuation of the reconstruction of a lost world and an addition to the catalog of attempts to make some sort of replica from its remains, and to restore the illusion of the homeland, at least in fantasy and imagination. In the layers of the narrative, the story of one life is interwoven, i.e. to one destiny, to one time that summed up so much of the past and future, a deep understanding of human nature, historical turmoil, the desire to belong, questioning transience, efforts to preserve at least the illusion of home even when everything has been irreversibly changed.
"Sand of the sandbox" - Milenko Bodirogić
"`It's strange,' Emina told me, but she knows that what she is telling me is not only hers, that she is largely a mediator, that Mensur speaks through her, and Hajri through Mensur. The two of them changed her," wrote Milenko Bodirogić near the end of the novel "Pesak pjeskare" ("Orfelin Publishing").
Sasa Ilic, winner of the NIN award, notes that the book can also be read as a story about the lost friendship of three boys – Mensur, Bogdan and the narrator himself – in the City of Salt, Coal and Sand. "In the search for that vanished world, spaces of fruitful melancholy grow, whose meanders the narrator will weave into the story of Yugoslavia between the Husin Rebellion (1920) and two war crimes that will mark the end of the City as it once was, which was trying to find its own, different road, resisting the siren call for a long time, they call it nation."
According to him, "Pesak pjeskare" is a novel that, like Ismet Mujezinović's often mentioned painting "Self-Portrait with a Monument", tells about what influenced the great Yugoslav painter to pause and warn society about the detours it was taking.
"Palace" - Goran Petrović
"From the spring, however, it became clear that something could be fixed in the donated Belgrade, but a lot of things had to be cleared completely if the new capital was not to rise", wrote Goran Petrović on the tenth page of the novel "The Palace" (" Laguna") whose title/subtitle are "Roman delta" and "On nine views".
That is, the book is accompanied by the determination that it is another story, a new "flow" in the "Delta Novel" by Goran Petrović, a universe of allegorical narratives whose action unfolds from the Middle Ages to the days we consider our own.
Perhaps it should be mentioned that Goran Petrović (1961-2024) submitted the book to the press while he was among us, and that this fact, in the opinion of the authorities, qualifies him for participation in the selection for NIN's novel of the year award. The note about the book says: "What preceded the construction of the palace of the despot Stefan Lazarevic in Belgrade, who was the ``wandering proto-master'' Petar, the Roman builder of palaces in Constantinople, Venice and Syracuse, who arrived in the despot's capital with recommendations, how he traveled The Mediterranean with Venetian galleys and how the construction of the palace went - the reader will discover in Goran Petrović's new novel, which chronologically precedes the novel 'Ikonostas'."
Bonus video:
