Letters from Serbia
“Me: Muahahaha… oh God, this Ljubenović and his ‘Letters from Serbia,’ you can tell it’s a newer book, he nailed everything! Hahahahahaha… (accidentally turns to the beginning of the book and sees it says “eighth edition”)… hahaha… haha? (then sees the first edition came out in 2014)… ha… ha… … … … … … … oh, God… … … uh, why does this book look like it was written yesterday?”
With satirical books you never know… whether it’ll go into cheap and transparent humor that will, after some time, bore you… or it’ll be some “humor” that only the author and two or three other people will understand, and the rest of the world will read the book with a pile of question marks above their heads, not knowing how to react to such a work.
Luckily, “Letters from Serbia” by Bojan Ljubenović is in neither of these two categories. This is the type of book where a smile will hover on your face the whole time… mostly your reactions will be that you’re not sure whether to laugh… or cry from misery. 😀
The book description on the back of the book says it all:
“Instructions for Use
CONTENT: this book contains a hundred satirical and witty letters that Ljubenović’s fictional foreigner writes to his people somewhere abroad, describing today’s Serbia.
EFFECT: the book is intended for those suffering from mythomania, egomania, elevated nationalism, galloping globalism, and other serious infectious diseases.
METHOD OF USE: read the book twice daily, after lunch and before bed, until general condition improves. If necessary, repeat the procedure.
INEVITABLE EFFECTS: this book causes maxillofacial spasm in most readers, popularly known as a smile.
STORAGE METHOD: store at room temperature or on a sea beach, out of reach of persons without a sense of humor.
EXPIRATION DATE: as long as there are Serbs and Serbia.”
Looking at the current situation, the expiration date worries me a bit…
Anyway, this is the ideal book description, which is, at the same time, in itself, a mini-review. 😀
Through the aforementioned letters of a fictional foreigner who came to live in Serbia, Ljubenović very subtly (“Subtly as a finger in the eye…” – note from the subconscious) describes life in Serbia in a very comical and, to be fair, (unfortunately) realistic way.
The great thing about the book “Letters from Serbia” is that there’s no part of our culture that wasn’t Ljubenović’s “victim”… though “victim” is perhaps even too harsh a joking word, because maybe only for a few letters I thought “well maybe this is exaggerated and not true”…
… to our regret, I couldn’t apply this comment to the other letters of the fictional foreigner, because my comment was also “ugh, fk, this is true too”… and there are over a hundred of them… I mean letters, not fks…
Keep in mind, this is satire, not some overblown humor with exaggeration, which makes this book even funnier and more hilarious, because it clearly shows you where you actually live.
There’s no topic or (accurate) stereotype that “Letters from Serbia” didn’t touch on. From our geographical position, through population composition, economy (you may not have known, but our main export product for which we’re known in the world are footballers, because there’s nowhere we haven’t exported them), agriculture, public enterprises, Serbia and Montenegro’s relationship, Serbia and Croatia, Serbia and America, Serbia and EU, Russophiles, football, BIA, Serbian Slava celebrations, SANU, the army, Belgrade and the interior, Corridor 10, metro, banks in Serbia, intellectual as an “occupation,” games of chance, Serbian managers, Serbs at the sea, Serbs in the mountains, ambassadors, gay parade, morning program, Serbian jet-set, pensioners, unions, truth in Serbia, elections, Serbs abroad, tourists in Serbia, Serbian wedding, public toilets, tycoons, wiretapping, New Year’s celebrations and sales, Serbian women, courtship in Serbia… there’s nothing Ljubenović didn’t touch on, he only missed the Zeleni Venac market, immigrants, and HR in Serbia! 😀
As I said, you’ll have a smile on your face the whole time (for some it might even be bitter :D), because in almost every letter you’ll recognize someone from your environment (and maybe yourself) or an event you attended.
An additional dose of humor is precisely in the fact that our (fictional) foreigner is completely confused and lost in his letters, because he himself often doesn’t understand why some things in Serbia are the way they are… to be fair, many (non-fictional) foreigners don’t understand why some things in Serbia are the way they are… and many Serbs don’t understand either…
Here, for example, excerpts from a few letters:
“I noticed that Serbs don’t like to read, but they love to write. That’s why there are more writers than readers here. A Serb who hasn’t published at least one book during his lifetime, and won a literary award on top of that, is considered an ordinary loser and lazy person, because what else would you call a man who couldn’t spare even a few days to become a respected writer.” (Thank God for Instagram, now we have even more authors who love to share and SPEW wise thoughts and philosophies they themselves don’t follow).
“Serbs are actually very hardworking, but they don’t like doing their own job. They love all other jobs, but their own – they don’t! There’s no Serb who doesn’t think he’d do any other job much better than the one he’s currently doing. Which is logical, because his job is the hardest, while all others are simpler and easier. Unfortunately, he can’t find any other, so he’s forced to do this one he has. Until he finds ‘something better,’ of course.” (Because, thank God, after the fourth beer everyone can lead the national football team instead of that idiot who went to school to be a coach; he’d easily set the country straight and clean everything up, although in the corner of his room a spider has already raised its third generation of baby spiders; and he’d invest everything in cryptocurrencies because that’s the future although yesterday he was saying the Internet is Satan’s spawn)
“It doesn’t occur to him to impose sanctions on Russia. Because Russia has never imposed sanctions on Serbia either. Well, and when it did, it had to. And just so you know, tomorrow he’d agree for Serbia to become a Russian governorate, because nowhere is more beautiful than in a mother’s embrace. Us and the Russians, three hundred million…” (about Serbian Russophiles)
“‘Let’s get together for coffee these days’ is a sentence from which the uninitiated concludes that the person who said it (usually his school friend, army buddy, former colleague, or youthful love) burns with desire to meet with them and peacefully, thoroughly evoke memories of shared days. Delusion! If they’re fooled and actually call that person for coffee, they’ll conclude it was just a courteous offer and that the emotional meeting won’t happen soon, and probably won’t happen at all.” (about the concept of “time” in Serbia – here I’d add a correction, because arranging coffee here also applies to people you’ve met more recently, not just those from your past :D)
“For someone to become an intellectual they must have special qualities. From earliest youth they must seriously care about the fate of the nation and state, and already in high school the concern for all humanity must weigh on their heart. Their language must abound in foreign words and Latin quotes, and gesticulation appropriate to the seriousness of the words they speak. By university they should have ready solutions for most world problems, and already in first year they must be wiser than their professors. By graduation they’ll have written several sociological studies and collections of patriotic poems and be an active member of at least two socially useful organizations.” (about the “occupation” of intellectual in Serbia)
As you can see, it’s not far from the truth… in fact, it’s not far at all, but right there nearby, a few millimeters from the truth.
Simply, “Letters from Serbia” hits the center of all our stereotypes and prejudices that the world has toward us (and we toward ourselves)… and moreover these letters from our (fictional and confused) foreigner manage to make us laugh, a foreigner we won’t even let rest in peace (you’ll see what I’m talking about if you read the book).
But for the descriptions of women and courtship in Serbia, I wasn’t well from how much I was laughing… you can be angry at me for this comment, but the description really isn’t far from the truth… and this was said by some women who read this book too…
All in all, “Letters from Serbia” is truly an interesting and, despite everything, cheerful book, and it would really be a shame not to read it, especially before bed, if you need to cheer up… one or two letters a day will be quite enough. This is stand-up comedy in literary form. Or “Tropic Thunder” in film form.
Maybe somewhat bitter/sour, but still witty satire. 😀
Finally, the author edited the famous TRN – Tako Reći Nezvanično (So to Speak Unofficial). 😀
And you, dear reader, did you recognize yourself in any of these letters? 🙂
Bojan Ljubenović’s website
Book price: Laguna | Vulkan | Delfi | Dereta
