Balša Brković on Podgorica, the city that became a literary hero

Podgorica was both the topic and the place of conversation last night. As part of the FIAT literary program, the writer Balša Brković presented his "Podgorica Trilogy", consisting of the novels "Private Gallery", "Paranoia in Podgorica" ​​and "Imelda Marcos Beach". He spoke with Aleksandar Bečanović.

A large audience gathered in the courtyard of the "Slobodan Škerović" High School, and the conversation mostly turned to Podgorica, the city that, thanks to Brković's prose, gained a different place in the literary landscape of Montenegro.

Speaking about "Private Gallery", Brković also recalled his earlier belief that Podgorica was not a sufficiently "photogenic" city for literature. It was precisely in this lack of a strong literary image that he recognized a space for writing: the city did not have to be recognized in advance as attractive in order to become literary interesting. In his prose, Podgorica is thus not just a backdrop to events, but a space in which people, their ambitions, everyday life and social changes meet.

Eight years after "Private Gallery", "Paranoia in Podgorica" ​​returned to the same city, but in a different tone. While the first novel brought the transitional Podgorica and its gallery of characters, the second presented the city through a darker genre framework, closer to political thriller and noir. Podgorica is here a city of suspicion and tension, but also a space of a different, more vibrant urban culture.

The conversation also opened up the question of our relationship with Podgorica. The relationship with the capital, as it was emphasized, is not just a matter of personal taste. It also speaks to how Montenegro understands urbanity, modernization and its own modernity. Podgorica has long carried the burden of the notion that it is not "literary" enough, and Brković's prose calls this notion into question, by taking the city seriously, with all its changes, contradictions and people.

That is why, through Brković's novels, another story about Podgorica can be followed. The city changes along with its inhabitants, the view of it also changes, and in that process, literature can preserve what everyday life often quickly covers up.

Part of the conversation was also dedicated to characters, especially female ones. Brković spoke about how often female characters in the traditional corpus of Montenegrin literature often remained trapped in predetermined roles. The issue of the female character thus opened up as a question of the character's literary right to complexity - to their own inner life, contradictions, feelings and autonomy.

From "Private Gallery" and the image of a transitional city, through the darker world of "Paranoia in Podgorica", to the question of how literature shapes our view of the place we live in, Brković and Bečanović's conversation was, fundamentally, a conversation about Podgorica, but also about how much the city can change when we start to look at it differently.

After the literary program, FIAT continued with music. APRO & LABIA and the Podgorica band KOLEKTOR performed, and the evening ended with a performance by DJ Miquelly.

FIAT continues tonight. At 18 pm in DODEST, the program will be "Znam. Neću!", while from 20 pm in KIC "Budo Tomović" the play "Teorema" will be performed, based on the work Pier Paolo PasoliniThe musical program begins at 22 pm in the courtyard of the "Slobodan Škerović" High School, where Sandraun will perform.