The last event of the literary segment “Bar Chronicle” was the first Montenegrin promotion of the novel “Cinnamon Letters, Diamond Creatures”. Faruk Sehicone of the most important and most translated contemporary authors from Bosnia and Herzegovina. The book was presented to the public on Saturday evening in the National Library and in the “Ivo Vučković” reading room.

Moderator of the evening, literary critic and selector of the literary segment “Ljetopisa” Dragana Erjavsek She recalled that Šehić’s new book is a “hybrid novel, a labyrinth novel,” as the literary critic called it Dennis Derk.

“This is a literary maelstrom that you enter, that you enter unprepared and that you come out of even more unprepared, but richer in the experiences of others that coincide with our own, in a series of homages, in some music that we may have forgotten to some extent, and in the bitterness that we have come to recognize as our own, even if the author has cloaked it in a formal garb. Above all, this is a novel about ruins, literal and metaphorical, about a rebirth that in this case is not exclusively from ashes but also from water; a novel about renewals, about continuation and a little about love,” said Erjavšek.

Šehić stressed that he is happy with his new book, but often thinks about how it will affect individual readers. Although he has processed his own and other people’s experiences of war in the story, it is all wrapped up in science fiction. He points out that the problem with war and tragedy is that they reach even those who think they are not interested in it, and he believes it is important to face the past, no matter how difficult it was.

“It is the result of a fiction. This city never existed, but I invented it from Sarajevo, Mostar, Gornji Vakuf, Bosanska Krupa… places I have been to, but also some others that I have seen in films or other art and that have flowed into me. My heroine Sinemon calls this city Orvel, after my favorite author, because he is a visionary author whose works we read to this day. This city is neither a dead nor a living being, just as war is a being, but I do not look at it from a human perspective,” reveals Šehić, explaining why he romanticizes and glorifies the ruins.

“He believes that ruinophilia (love of ruins) is nostalgia for times and places that did not exist. It sounds strange, but I realized that I love it. Empty, abandoned cities that no longer have people have a certain charm. If you want to develop your intimacy, you have to be alone,” believes Šehić.

The writing of the novel “Cinnamon Letters, Diamond Creatures” began in Cetinje and he explained that the book has eleven endings and that the reader has the opportunity to choose his own.

“Many of these regions are not actually regions. Since this is a complex novel, I wanted to convey the feeling of epic duration,” concluded Šehić.

Excerpts from the novel were read with great inspiration by Nikoleta Dabanović.

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