The first novel by a Montenegrin author Dragan Tripković "Lovište samoće" was recently published by the publishing house "Platforma knjiga" from Podgorica and the Open Cultural Forum (OKF) from Cetinje.
"The novel by prominent Montenegrin poet and playwright Dragana Tripković emerges from the experience of the pandemic and social crisis in Montenegro, but it resists being just a story about the pandemic. Through the motif of isolation, the novel explores the boundaries between the village and the city, the professional and the intimate, the instinctive and the rational, the body and politics, freedom and security," the publisher's statement states.
There are two plot lines, they add.
"Urban noir about corruption and media pressure and the rural-mythological return of the protagonist to her homeland are intertwined through characters and symbols such as the snake, which signifies persistent life energy, transformation and permanent crisis," the statement reads.
The title “Hunting Ground of Solitude” metaphorically summarizes the state of exposure and isolation in a world of power and cruelty, the publisher explains, paralleling the hunting of animals in nature and the hunting of people in the city.
The novel's foreword is signed by the book's editor. Jelena Knežević, which, among other things, emphasizes the authenticity of the characters as embodiments of primal principles and the symbolism of the snake as the axis of the composition: from threat to an atmosphere of universal crisis.
"'The Hunting Ground of Solitude' is a literary world where the personal meets the collective, and crisis becomes a permanent state of existence. This is the first novel by Dragana Tripković, who has so far presented herself to the Montenegrin and international audience as a poet and playwright. Her many years of theater experience are reflected in her prose in lively dialogues that abound in witty humor, as well as in the economy of expression and situational tension. Of particular note are the authentic scenes in which collective events are viewed from a critical perspective, exclusively through literary means, and without moral superiority or pamphlet-like authorial commentary," Knežević wrote.
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