Visit the author’s website here.

Read an interview with Miljenko Jergovic: “You cannot delete the past.”:

How far do you think that the cultural wall which separates the peoples of Central Europe today is due to the fact that we don’t speak each other’s language?

There are several kinds of walls between these countries. The first crucial difference is indeed the language. Of course, anyone could ask why we don’t just walk into a language school and learn to speak Hungarian, Italian or Romanian – but that would not solve anything. The peoples of the southern Slavic region, Macedonians, Serbians, Croatians, Slovenians, Bosnians, Montenegrins all speak the same or very similar languages, but there are still walls between these very new countries. We are living through very difficult times – a period of awakening nationalism, religious warfare, a disillusioned age which has proved disappointing when compared to the expectations we had after the collapse of the Berlin wall. There is nothing more absurd than the appearance of skinheads in Eastern Europe! It is devastating to think that there are people living in Hungary who would willingly kill Gypsies, and people in Croatia who would kill blacks or Muslims. These young people are unaware that all of us, the peoples living here, our families and our parents would all have been wiped off the face of the earth had Adolf Hitler achieved victory.

On his political power as a writer:

You find yourself in a privileged position: not subjected to anyone, politically or materially, and so you can have a really independent opinion. You often express this publicly and are criticised for it. Why?

I doubt they fear me, since I don’t possess the kind of power that here, in these parts, is taken seriously. Look, I have no economic power, no political connections in Brussels, I don’t even have a mafia-type organisation to sell heroin to kids or beat up my intellectual adversaries.

I do nothing but say and write what I think, and that’s exactly what irritates them. When I say to them that I’m thinking of the nationalists and fascists in these parts, but I’m also thinking of another extremely interesting group, that is a group of formerly independent journalists who, in the 90s materially exploited the Soros funds for freedom in the media, and are now furious because no one wants to finance their social involvement any more.

They, like all the other nationalist comrades would be very happy if I left Croatia. That’s the line they take and write up in the newspapers. It’s a very interesting sensation when self-proclaimed men of the left and anarchists begin to inform me that I am an intruder in the country I live in.

In New Eastern Europe:

Who was Miljenko Jergović in the early 1990s and who is he today?

I think that not much has changed in my life throughout this period of time. In the 1990s, I was more or less the same person I am today – a writer, an essayist and a journalist. I had my own column in the Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian press where I was publishing opinion essays. By the end of the 1990s I started to write for the Serbian press again. Since then not much has changed. In that time I have also written the majority of my books. In all, a few thousand pages. From the very beginning they have been translated into many languages – Italian, German, French. In other areas, my life has not changed at all.

What pushed you to start writing? Was it the result of a specific event which took place in your life?

Surprisingly, it was a very ordinary situation. As a seven-year old, I just decided one day to become a writer. At first, my parents did not treat this plan of mine seriously. However, later, probably because I did not come up with any better idea, they finally came to terms with my choice. By saying this, I just want to show that this was the only thing I wanted to do in life. I have always been the happiest when I could write for different newspapers and magazines, something which I am still doing today.