Summary
Srđan Valjarević: Komo
"She went to the piano, in another room, and played it. I squinted.
And I squinted, and suddenly: the Korčula cathedral, man!"
SRĐAN VALJAREVIĆ (1967), is a Serbian contemporary writer, novelist, storyteller and poet. His most important books are: List na korici (novel, 1990), Joe Fraser and 49 Poems (1992), People at the Table (novel, 1994), Winter Diary (prose, 1995), Second Diary of Winter (prose, 2005), Como (novel, 2006). Srđan Valjarević's prose and poetry have been translated into many languages.
According to a survey by Sarajevo's Oslobođenj in which around 250 authors, critics, literature professors, journalists, publishers and translators from the region took part in early 2018, KOMO is the best book published from 2000 to 2016 in Croatia, BiH, Serbia and Montenegro.
Valjarević's individuality is aware the fateful fact of his own choice to spend his life not in the apparent idyll of Italy, or some third, more promising country, but in the distraction and frenzy of post-war Serbia from the beginning of the 21st century, which strikes silently from the subtext of this novel. For me—one of the best novels of the generation.
Zoran Pilić
When you don't take literary scholarships, awards and residencies seriously, Komo is born: read and read, deep and authentic; text, which cannot be created at the residence.
Jurij Hudolin
Telling about the days of peace and leisure, Komo grew into an anti-war novel, writing about the world, talking about himself, Valjarević said everything important about us—people from the periphery of that world.
Olja Savičević Ivančević
Biblos Newsletter
New titles, special copies and quiet recommendations from the antiquarian bookshop.