To the Far Shore by Négovan Rajic , Translated by Nora Alleyn
In an autobiographical novel that reads like memoir, Négovan Rajic recounts the final years of the Second World War and the year immediately afterwards from the viewpoint of a young resistance fighter in the former Yugoslavia. But this is not a war memoir, replete with grim details and grand, heroic gestures; the older Négovan’s life experiences — and his distance from the story — have given him a strong sense of irony.
Having survived the war, the young narrator of the novel returns to the country’s capital and enrolls in the Faculty of Engineering in the University of Belgrade only to discover that the political movement sweeping his country — and its leader, Tito, known in To the Far Shore as The Grand Master and The Master of the Keys — is undermining his education and the entire society in which he grew up. Realizing that his future was not to be found in his homeland, the young narrator takes a trip to see his father, explains himself, and then, together with a friend, plans his defection to Austria.
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