His demise begins when he accidentally kills an artist during a theatre performance in which he has been invited to take part. The novel follows nine turbulent days in the life of a naive young intellectual, Valentino Kovačević, Montenegro’s Minister of Culture. His latest novel, Minister, is a scathing take on the political system in the country today. The dramatist, scriptwriter, and prosaist Stefan Bošković, born in Podgorica in 1983, is the Montenegrin winner of the 2020 European Union Prize for Literature. Nikolaidis is a highly respected political journalist who mercilessly dissects post-Yugoslav Montenegro, with no holds barred and no modesty-saving cosmetics allowed. The metafictional excursions which this allows and the author’s speculations about the role of the occult in acts of cruelty throughout history are intriguing, but Till Kingdom Come is a serious book. The complex plot is enhanced by the protagonist’s “spatio-temporal lapses”: at one point he is walking through Podgorica, and then he finds himself in London. Nikolaidis’s prose is polished, witty, and rich in caustic humour. But the inkling that this past could be a lie sets David on a journey of self-discovery and speculation, and when his great-uncle is found dead soon after their meeting, David wonders: has he jeopardised a secret? What he says sows seeds of doubt in David, who was raised by his grandmother and believed his mother to be dead: a story backed up by photographs, a family history, and a Jewish name.
Soon afterwards, a man arrives claiming to be David’s great-uncle from Bosnia. The Calvert Journal has picked three pioneering novels at the vanguard of this new trend, dealing with the capital-P political system: parliament, parties, and the web of forces behind the scenes. Meanwhile, a new law adopted in late 2019 to regulate the status of churches and other religious property riled the powerful Serbian Orthodox Church, leading to protests and a diplomatic cold war between Belgrade and Podgorica.Īuthors living in the country certainly have a lot to write about, leading to a new wave of socially-critical fiction. An attempted Russia-orchestrated coup took place in Montenegro in 2016. Serbia considers Montenegro part of its sphere of influence, as does Russia, a longtime Serbian ally. These moves were controversial with many of the country’s ethnic Serbs - 28 per cent of the population - who objected to NATO membership. Soon after seceding from the joint state with Serbia, Montenegro applied for membership in the EU and joined NATO in 2017. Europe’s newest state was born, renewing the Montenegrin sovereignty of 1878-1918, gained after fighting against the Ottoman Empire. When the population of Montenegro voted by a narrow margin in 2006 to cede from the last manifestation of Yugoslavia (“Serbia and Montenegro”), there was an air of euphoria in the pro-independence camp and in many Western countries.
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