Return to the Story: Post-war Fiction in the Former Yugoslavia‪.‬

The things happened for the second time and that is memory. In our collective memories it is always the second time around. Isn't it what combats solitude most essenetially? (1) The wars of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia gave rise to a great deal of creative activity, both in visual arts as well as in literature. The major motivation for this activity was the need to remember, to bear witness and, to give meaning to the often incomprehensible experiences. With several exceptions, these works are highly emotional and mimetic: the authors were unable to establish a distance between the events and the narrative. As a result, most of their works lack high literary value.