Four years after the publication of the novel “Mulatto Albino Komarac”, which was in the very final of the NIN award, Steve Grabovac’s new novel “After the Party” arrived.
The novel brings readers a layered and skilfully told story about a father, crime, family, friendship and growing up.
With the theme of duplicity, as big as it is in our literature, the writer frames thematically different segments that make this book a cross-section of one life. Moments illuminated in this way are framed by the duality of father and son, the figure of the first writer and the one who inherits – a gift, a writer’s sensitivity and a legacy, an order to confront injustice with an open heart and a single typewriter.
The narrator travels a long way – from bad writing and literary contests, through memories of the defense and the last days of his father, to a secret origin and adolescence colored by war, to a terrible crime, all the way to reminiscences of great friendships and broken threads, one or the other way, they find a way to reunite.
“As in the first book, this novel also has something of great love, great sadness and lifelong melancholy. There are also great refuges from the “metaphysical November”, in music, conversations on building roofs, bar philosophies, film and literature.”states editor Marija Pejić.
There is no way such sentences can be written by someone who has not himself been deeply shaken by the tragedies that are omnipresent around us. Recognizable, self-built style, polished tone, unexpected embroidery, management of several novel levels – everything is completely harmonious, the sound is muted and silent in the thunderous vision of what is next to you.
“Stevo Grabovac invites our conscience to dinner. To respond means to meet yourself big and scared in front of lost humanity, in front of immense loneliness”he wrote about the novel Darko Cvijetić.
While the father was alive, the hero was young. Now, when he is alone in the desert, with all the existential and metaphysical questions that must be answered if he wants to continue living, and now that he would ask his father anything, he is no longer there.
And the father is Pascal’s only point of support. Walking between the world of the living and the world of the dead, the hero tries to reconstruct the time allotted to him and recreate himself, the world and its meaning from images and words.
“What is this place, my soul?”, as if Seneca’s question sleeps in the subconscious of each chapter of this dynamic mosaic of unspeakable war tragedy, but also ontological, animalistically strong and unyielding longing for humanity, closeness and all the beauty with which we are endowed and which is ours. available, stated Miroslav Gojković.
The audience will have the opportunity to attend a conversation with Steve Grabovec about the novel “After the Party” on May 31 at 7:00 PM in Banski Dvor, as part of the festival Imperative.
Stevo Grabovac was born on November 9, 1978 in Slavonski Brod. He grew up and graduated from high school in Bosanski Brod. He studied at the Faculty of Technology in Banja Luka. In 2007, he published the collection of poems “Station of non-existent trains”. His first novel “Mulatto Albino Komarac” (2019) ended up in the shortlist for NIN’s award and received the Šušnjar award. He lives and works in Banja Luka.
(WORLD)