Summary
Vladan Matijević: Nora and the Snake
The heroes of Matijević's stories resemble the inhabitants of a disturbed society; their statements are the personal confessions of marginals - mostly unenlightened and amoral individuals on the edge of law and reason - who have found themselves in basic human situations, and whose thoughts and actions are devoid of common logic. Even when told in the first person, the unusual train of thought, lucid observations and unexpected associations - and the tone of everyday conversations or diary entries about ordinary events and objects - grow into impressive and unusual pictures imagined by the narrator. At the same time, what makes this prose unusual, almost surreal, are the elements of fantasy and absurd refraction of time because, according to the writer, in many stories "the new begins and continues parallel to the old", so the reader will find out why Pelops, the ancient Greek hero from the Peloponnese, hired a law firm, when the beautiful Jelena usually goes to the beauty salon or what God announces in the weather forecast through a television address... Divided into five cycles, this original a collection of diverse stories consists of seemingly unrelated fragments - often grotesque and perverted confessions of the main characters - stories that reflect the bizarre logic, but also the value system and cheerful everyday life of the modern consumer society.
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