Courtesy of Istros Books, Thomas Rose-Masters (Uros Tomic) offers some fascinating insights:
Two facts are of interest as starting points for this presentation: 1) Genre fiction, especially crime fiction has never been a popular choice for writers in Serbia; 2) Genre fiction, especially crime fiction in translation has always been the most popular reading material of Serbian readers. This invites an interesting question: Why has it been popular to read crime fiction, and unpopular (or perhaps unacceptable) to write it?
A short look into the reasons why this might be:
Similar to other European genre literatures, the Serbian writing on crime started with periodicals. In the UK it was the famous (or infamous) Newgate Calendar in the 18th and 19th centuries which brought to readers for the first time journalistic accounts of true crimes and subsequent executions committed in the UK. In the course of time true crime began to give way to interesting short stories written specifically for periodicals which included criminal behavior, con-artistry and other forms of nefarious trickery as this had proved popular with the readers and the magazine editors were only too happy to oblige. In France, the (most likely) ghost written memoirs of a former criminal and first chief of organized police Vidocq were serialized, again in form of true accounts of his cases. In Serbia, there was the magazine entitled The Police Herald at the turn of the 20th century – a popular, state sponsored journal with national circulation; it offered true crime accounts, portraits of criminals, and news on wanted men and women. However, this is where the similarities in the development of crime fiction between the British, French, and Serbian literatures end.
Serbia of the time was an agricultural monarchy – there existed no middle class, which is the most fertile ground for types of literature that are neither too simplified nor too intellectual. The majority of the Serbian population at the turn of the century was illiterate. The political environment was radical: an ideology of socialist, agricultural, patriarchal hierarchy with ideas that literature should be enlightening rather than entertaining. In such circumstances all forms of genre literature, and indeed genre itself suffered. Examples of crime fiction writing were few and far between. One notable exception: in 1921 a novel entitled The Underground Club appeared, ostensibly a translated work by one Harald Johnsson – it was only much later revealed that the novel was an experiment by one of the most famous Serbian authors Miloš Crnjanski. The pseudonym and the fact that Crnjanski never revealed it during his lifetime (although he indicated the existence of the novel in one of his unfinished manuscripts) exemplify the need to hide the author’s identity, due at least partly to the subject matter at hand. This trend will continue with Serbian writers through the years.
During the communist (and later socialist) reign the crime novel was officially (in literary theory of the time) categorized as "trivial literature", only adding to the stigma that genre writing carried. Romance novels were tolerated, as they were by and large seen as the necessary (and appropriate) vent for the hard-working woman of the day, but when it came to crime fiction the agenda of the time seemed logical, if perverse: in socialist era there were no hard crimes in the successful and peaceful Yugoslavia, so how could there ever exist a need for local crime fiction? Thus the only available crime fiction was the one translated from what was often designated the "Rotten West", showcasing the decline of the western civilization while becoming bestselling fiction by far (and this status was especially enjoyed by Agatha Christie, whose popularity was unrivaled. It could be argued that Christie’s novels, pure Golden Age puzzle mysteries were the acceptable format of crime fiction in socialist Yugoslavia; her books rarely bring into question the deeper psychological and societal implications of violence and murder and instead focus on the intricacies of the plotlines and characterization through dialogue, often with traces of irony towards the upper classes). The only writers to successfully explore crime fiction during this period came, not surprisingly, from the Republic of Croatia (Pavao Pavličić, Goran Tribuson) with the exception of one Serbo-Croatian author, Milan Nikolić, whose popular work was most often set on the coast of Croatia (which is another testament to more permeable genre boundaries in this republic). During the 1960s, 70s and 80s of special significance were two publishing projects that combined domestic crime fiction and crime fiction in translation in pocket book format for cheap prices: the Green Library (Zelena biblioteka), published (somewhat surprisingly) by Kosmos, the imprint of the Central Board of the Yugoslav Deaf People Association in Belgrade, and Trace (Trag), published by the Croatian newspaper company Vjesnik. However, even within these projects crime fiction in translation was much more frequently issued.
The 21 century has brought a surge of international crime writers being translated into Serbian (French, Scandinavian, German, Japanese, Russian, etc.) but there have also been more concerted attempts to found a firmer basis of the genre in Serbian writing. Even though genre fiction is still looked upon as less relevant, and certainly less literary almost by default by the Serbian intellectual elites and is therefore allowed very little room, if any, in academic discourse, the number of writers, more or less popular, who write genre fiction has grown. It has become even possible to determine several subgenres within crime fiction which are popular with Serbian writers and readers: the traditional mystery, historical adventure, and humorous crime fiction. For this presentation I have chosen to take a closer look at several authors whose crime fiction work has been published in the past three years, and I am interested mostly in exploring why Serbian genre writing is still not very popular, i. e. why crime writing in translation is still more trusted than domestic fiction. I aim to investigate how Serbian crime fiction compares to the prevailing genre tropes which come from the Anglophone countries.
The novel The Yellow Raincoat by Đorđe Bajić was published in 2013 and the author is hailed on the book cover as "The King of Serbian Thriller" – which begs the question what exactly a Serbian thriller is, or can be? Primarily there is the issue of the appropriateness of this label – this novel is not a thriller, as the subgenre of crime fiction recognized as such requires a set of elements clearly not present in the book (heightened tension, multiple storylines "edited" in a crosscut technique, brief scenes, lots of action, etc.). The Yellow Raincoat is in fact written in the tradition of the classical Anglophone mystery: the novel opens with a list of characters – similar to the practices of the Golden Age of crime novel in the 1920s and 30s; the plotline deals with an apparently accidental death of a young woman in a fall from a building where strange things seem to be happening, and features a limited circle of suspects; there is a character who takes on the detection of the crime in spite of the (mostly unsuccessful) efforts by the official detective on the case, etc. The conclusion therefore is that the blurb is misleading (or just plain wrong) but is the Serbian reader sufficiently proficient in the nuances of the subgenre to understand this, and do they even care? What is significant is that the novel is clearly labeled as genre writing, and ultimately the nuance of the label does not matter. This could be offered as proof that crime fiction in Serbia still needs to educate its readers as to the subtleties of varying subgenres.
Furthermore, there is the issue of the adjective "Serbian" thriller. What makes it specifically Serbian, as opposed to any other thriller? It is certainly not sufficient to set the plot in Serbia and mention several recognizable geographic spots to seriously root it in the Serbian milieu. In The Yellow Raincoat the action could be excised from this particular setting and placed into any other almost anywhere on the planet with few, if any changes without the novel losing any of its largely generic and formulaic plot points or characterizations. Interestingly not even the characters’ names are typically Serbian, and they bring about a further sense of lack of rootedness in the local experience as well as a distinct flavor of the Anglophone; this is also evident in the choice of characters’ occupations (housekeepers/maids are very unusual for contemporary Serbia to say the least). Additionally, the depiction of the detective interrogating a witness could have come straight from an American TV show. (It is interesting to note that conversations with various Serbian police officials have confirmed the essential areality of such an interrogation process locally. Instead of exploring the practices of the typical Serbian police investigation, Bajić has again opted for emulating the Anglophone matrix, and missed the opportunity to supply his novel with a sense of local reality.) Generally, the dialogue in the book often reads like a translation from English, and sounds stilted (which is admittedly a problem suffered by the majority of Serbian literature and dramatic writing).
Aside from this mislabeling both genre- and location-wise, how does The Yellow Raincoat hold up as a crime novel? Some of the main literary techniques used in the book – frequent time shifts and changes in the narrative focus – while showing some writerly effort also undermine the main tenets of crime fiction by repeating what the reader already knows instead of offering new information and at the same time not making it possible for the readers to follow the clues and motivations themselves (they are given them through simplified explication – which is hardly a valid technique in any kind of fiction writing). The characterization is largely two-dimensional which harks back to the early stages of the development of the crime novel in other languages, and does not realistically correspond to the current state of affairs in this complex genre. In a sense Bajić’s novel is only "pretend" crime fiction – it is a book-length retelling of a moderately interesting plot populated by not very interesting characters, told by a boring but self-satisfied self-described raconteur.
A side note: Serbian publishing has been plagued by a worrying lack of editorial practices (very often no editing, proofreading or more carefully made general editorial choices), and, quite possibly harking back to socialist times the author’s text is often treated as sacrosanct to ruinous effect. There is evidence of several tightly knit and highly excluding communities of authors in existence, flanked by self-proclaimed critics and would-be analysts who review and edit each other’s work, creating a self-sustained bubble of mutual acclaim without any real critical input. When it comes to crime fiction one of the issues is also the lack of suitably competitive market (or any market whatsoever) in terms of crime fiction writers who would potentially raise the bar against each other in an attempt to win over audiences. This might be one of the reasons why translated crime fiction is still preferable to Serbian – even with dodgy editing of the dodgy translations the original plotlines and overall novel structure still seem to be quite superior.
An example of the said tightly knit community at work is the novel A Supermodel for Murder, published in 2012 and written by Verica Vinsent-Kol: the book was ostensibly edited by the previously mentioned author, Đorđe Bajić. Although it remains unclear what exactly this editing process entailed this is one of the rare examples of author openly stating that her work on a manuscript has been edited – unfortunately the results are far from stellar.
This novel takes the form of a classical whodunit; the author is on the cover called the "Serbian Agatha Christie". The implications of this marketing ploy are significant in that it is designed to steer the reader toward the point of reference they are most likely to recognize: the Serbian reader is not expected to be well acquainted with the new trends in international crime writing, therefore the perennially popular Agatha Christie is the safest bet for genre-labeling the book clearly. However, though the book shares some genre staples with Christie the comparison seems rather perfunctory, especially bearing in mind that this is a contemporary novel set in the world of a reality TV show where several young girls are fighting for the title of supermodel and a modeling contract. However, due to the editorial policies of larger Serbian publishing houses which choose to translate according to sales figures and not genre quality, the more significant Anglophone works in the contemporary reincarnations of the classical mystery (Lynda LaPlante, Sharon Bolton, Anne Cleeves, etc.) are largely, if not totally unknown to the average Serbian reader, thereby necessitating another misleading description.
This being said, A Supermodel for Murder is nevertheless more firmly rooted in the traditions and patterns of crime fiction than the previously mentioned novel, especially as it allows the reader to participate in the solving of the crime, which Bajić’s novel does not seem to know how to do. The setting, although not rendered sufficiently local/Serbian is mostly used to good effect, and while Bajic’s novel rarely inspires even the most basic interest in the events or the characters this novel does contain the drive essential for the genre. The book features a pair of private investigators (again, not unheard of in Serbia, but hardly a viable job opportunity), and interestingly this novel, as well as the others explored here show a fairly negative attitude towards the Serbian police – which may well be the only locally charged motif – another logical remnant of the socialist past where police was seen more as the extended arm of the dictatorial system than a functional recourse of those in trouble.
Stylistically Verica Vinsent-Kol is marginally a better writer than Bajić (though this fact may well be the benefit of editing). Her characterization, though not very developed is more deftly drawn and even offers some deeper insight into what are essentially stock characters. Much more problematic are the editorial choices of omitting certain key scenes, which are only related through explication (reminiscent of The Yellow Raincoat), which ends up costing the book the much needed urgency and tension, as well as allowing some characters to float in and out of the book as they are needed to further the plot or make a point – much like props in a play – which undermines the good work in characterization and motivation.
Probably one of the most accomplished crime novels in Serbia has been published in 2011 by Mirjana Novaković who is already well known for combining elements of genre literature with general literary tendencies. (Incidentally, the blurb on the cover is written by Đorđe Bajić – again exposing the narrow circle of participants in the perpetuation of what seems to be the myth of a developing genre fiction scene in Serbia. Based on solely these pieces of information one might conclude that Bajić is one of the best genre writers in Serbia – he has in fact published just the one crime novel and it is worth further investigating what/who positions him as the arbiter of good genre writing.)
The novel is intriguingly entitled Tito Has Died, and it features the character of a nameless female journalist who is also the novel’s narrator, and whose investigative career has been ruined in an attempt to expose criminal dealings of the Serbian politicians and government during the 1999 Kosovo crisis. The character is sharply drawn – an embittered alcoholic, a single middle-aged misanthropic woman who nevertheless charges like a bloodhound towards the truth. The novel’s crime fiction format hides an often profound exploration of a country in turmoil, examining its socialist past of unspeakable actions and its contemporary (allegedly) democratic status again disclosing unspeakable actions which seem to run parallel to any other political, social or governmental activity. This book is an interesting amalgamation of a fast-paced, character and plot driven narrative with pattern plotting enfolding a biting and cynical portrait of East European zeitgeist. Even though the novel is stylistically somewhat over-written at times (once again, the need for good editing proves crucial), Mirjana Novaković manages to capture the essence of her characters admirably. The diction is quite original and idiosyncratic, and in style the novel can hardly be compared with the previous two – it has more guts and is much more genre-savvy and controlled. The authorial voice is effectively replaced by the voluble narrator, in what at times almost becomes stream of consciousness (although happily without the attending confusion).
Structurally the novel is much more complex than the previous two, as it works on two levels depicting two parallel strands of the narrator’s experience: one deals with researching information she gets apparently at random from an old ex-communist about an article published in the leading Serbian newspaper in 1968 which in acrostic spells out the message TITO HAS DIED giving the exact date and time of his death 12 years later. The second is about her getting the unexpected accreditation to cover the annual Democratic Party Assembly, during which one of its brightest up-and-coming political stars is found dead from an apparent heroin overdose. This type of structure might usefully place Tito Has Died in the subgenre of the historical crime novel. (There are two main types of historical crime novels: those that take place in the past where a crime has been committed and solved, and those which are set in the present but deal with past crimes.) Regardless of the author’s original intent, this novel proves highly functional as a platform to pose broader questions on the cultural matrix of communal existing in the past, imaginary or real (and it is open to debate how real any past can be as it has already become a story) which seems to be the mainstay within the Balkan culture; it is the issue of perceiving the past as tradition to be revered or, inversely, as the source of misery in the present, and these two views have become posters for opposing political currents in Serbia. Tito Has Died, in its potent blend of crime and general fiction points towards the possibility that within chthonic cultures (such as those within the Balkans) the subgenre of historical (and political) crime novel might be the most functional to fulfill its complex role within the cultural weave of the society, and manage to avoid the over-emulation of a foreign genre matrix.
