Borislav Pekić

Borislav Pekic

Borislav Pekic's The Houses of Belgrade, first published in 1970, draws a parallel between the unrest culminating in the Belgrade student riots of 1968 and that at two earlier points in the history of Yugoslavia: the riots which immediately preceded Germany's attack on Belgrade in the spring of 1941 and the turmoil of Serbia's entry into World War I. Pekic relates his tale through the character of Arsenie Negovan, one of the prime builders of houses in Belgrade. Although Arsenie is dying, losing his sanity as his life seeps away, his narrative is sustained by his intellectual and aesthetic vision, by his love of buildings and his passionate obsession with the houses of Belgrade. Through this metaphor of the gradual decline of a builder's mind, Pekic gives us a compelling look at the unspoken fear of loss and destruction in a chronically disrupted urban society.

The Houses of Belgrade

Borislav Pekic spent six years in jail as a political prisoner, his only reading material the Bible. In 1965, ten years after his pardon, his first novel, The Time of Miracles, was published and became an overnight sensation. A set of parables based on the miracles of the New Testament, the book rewrites the story of Jesus from the perspective of Judas (who is obsessed with the idea prophecy must be fulfilled) and from that of the individuals upon whom miracles were performed--without their consent and, in most cases, to their eventual dissatisfaction. Filled with humor and poignancy, The Time of Miracles is a trenchant commentary on the power of ideology in one's life, upon what it means to hold beliefs, and upon the nature of faith.

The Time of Miracles

Building can be seen as a master metaphor for modernity, which some great irresistible force, be it Fascism or Communism or capitalism, is always busy rebuilding, and Houses is a book about a man, Arsénie Negovan, who has devoted his life and his dreams to building. Bon vivant, Francophile, visionary, Negovan spent the first half of his life building houses he loved and even named—Juliana, Christina, Agatha—while making his hometown of Belgrade into a modern city to be proud of. The second half of his life, after World War II and the Nazi occupation, he has spent in one of those houses, looked after by his wife and a nurse, in hiding. Houses is set on the final day of his life, when Negovan at last ventures forth to see the world as it is. Negovan is one of the great characters in modern fiction, a man of substance and a deluded fantasist, a beguiling visionary and a monster of selfishness, a charmer no matter what. And perhaps he is right to fear that home is only an illusion in our world, or that only in illusion is there home.

Houses

Bojan Mišić

Originally published in 1975, The Apology and the Last Days is the final volume in a trilogy of novels—also including The Rise and Fall of Icarus Gubelkian and How to Quiet a Vampire—about the aftermath of World War II, by Borislav Pekić, one of the former Yugoslavia’s most important postwar writers. The narrator tells his story from prison, where he is serving time for the murder of a former Nazi official. As the novel unfolds, we learn that the victim was the same person whom the narrator, while a lifeguard during the war, saved from drowning, thus making him vulnerable to charges of collaboration. In this tragicomic tale, Pekic ́ explores eternal questions of fate and individual responsibility.

A Novel

The Apology and the Last Days

A study of terror and intellect in the tradition of Joseph Heller and George Steiner

Borislav Pekic

About

Books

Join the club