This year's winner of the NIN award is Marinko Arsić Ivkov, whose novel "NGDL" was declared the best in the Serbian language in 2024 by a jury of critics.
The website of the publisher of this novel, the Niš Cultural Center, has not yet announced the winner, which was announced at noon today, nor has it provided any information about the book. The Publishing section of the Niš Cultural Center's website lists books from previous years.
Marinko Arsić Ivkov told the media about the novel: "A writer cannot escape from his time or space, so I tried to find a new angle so that it would not be a typical war theme, but would be a little sarcastic and make the reader laugh."
He also explained the meaning of the title of his novel: it is an abbreviation for "Don't let the pigeon fly", which refers to the mark that the border police put on the file of the main character and his pigeon.
"NGDL" belongs to a specific form, a comic novel, and is adorned with bright humor – it was what brought Milenko Arsić Ivkov the Nin Award.
The jury found that the components of light humor, sarcasm, cynicism, and the attitude towards the legacy of the 90s, which is also valuable, broaden the palette and stand out from the dark wave in which there were several prominent novels, which treated the topic in the domain of the disgusting, grotesquely ugly, and unpleasant.
"The book is humorous, interesting, and follows a long history of Servantesian and Gogolian storytelling and mockery. It tries to find a tremendously beautiful and incredibly successful metaphor with a dove," said the jury's president, a professor at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade, explaining the jury's decision. Alexander Jerkov.
Jerkov also said that in the history of world literature, there is a thread that has developed from antiquity to the present day and to which a specific form of novel belongs, which we would call the comic novel, and to which the award-winning novel also belongs.
"There are very few such novels in Serbian literature, and you can count on your fingers the novels that have this kind of comic disposition and that have left a stamp and mark in Serbian literary history," said Jerkov.
The jury, in addition to Aleksandar Jerkov, includes Tamara Mitrović, were and Adriana Marcetic, Vladimir Gvozden i Mladen Vesković.
The shortlisted novels for the award included "A Bird Flies Along a Sharp Knife" Tanje Stupar Trifunović"Now I wander the world dead" Borivoj Gerzić and "A Tin Coffin for Zaimović Zejna" Muharem Bazdulja.
Gerzić and Bazdulj received one jury vote each.
The NIN weekly award has been awarded since 1954 and is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the Balkans. Marinko Arsić Ivkov is the 71st recipient of this award.
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