Miljenko Jergović (born 28 May 1966) is a prominent Bosnian writer.
Biography
Born in Sarajevo, SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, SFR Yugoslavia to Croatian parents, Jergović received his M.A. in literature from the Sarajevo University. While at high-school, he started working as a journalist in printed and electronic media, as a contributor to literary and youth magazines, and was soon recognized as Croatia's media correspondent from Sarajevo.
Writing
Jergović's novels treat his family members and their histories. He is also a journalist and has published a collection of his articles in Historijska čitanka (A Reader in History, 1996).
Jergović writes a column in the Serbian daily Politika, for Vreme magazine and a regular column in the Croatian daily Jutarnji list entitled Sumnjivo lice (trans. "suspicious character", lit. "suspicious face").
Works
His novel Buick Riviera was made into a movie in 2008 by filmmaker Goran Rušinović, and the two were in turn awarded the Golden Arena for Best Screenplay. According to the author himself, it is a "novella" set in North American countryside, dealing with the conflict of a Serbian refugee from Bosnia, probably a war criminal, and a Muslim refugee who had spent twenty years in the United States. Its heroes, who always carry with them their native lore, their religion and their mentality, though they have numerous reasons for feelings of love and understanding of others, become victims of their own inability to rise above their national background, above their old hatreds and the burden of historical conflicts.
Miljenko Jergovic wrote another novel or "documented diary" – "Volga, Volga", a book about a car and his driver. This is a complicated story about guilt and death, the Yugoslav war and internal conflicts. As Jergovic is a great storyteller, he starts with the outside: Volga is not only black but glossy black like a piano. The reader realizes a main effect of storytelling: that war destroys, while stories nurture and continue life. Focal characteristics of the book are desire and strangeness, sadness and anger. Jergović’s car is a "documentary fantasy" and the story is about a generation living a lie. Jergović’s Yugoslavia lost in dreams of acting, the desire for truth is opposed illusions and dreams, lies and legends. Jergovic the master of melancholy presents driving as a journey into the past, awakens memories of companions, times of sadness and loneliness. A central figure in the novel is Jalal Pljevljak, who is the experienced driver and a Muslim believer, whose faith prohibits the consumption of alcohol, drunk, and so risked disaster. Although the reader gets the key to a mysterious accident, the second impression prevails: the uncertainty about where the boundaries between fact, facts, legends, dreams and lies are. The truth about things, it shows the contrasting perspectives of game storytelling, not just a matter of personal integrity and identity. Thus, the author briefly illuminates the history of the former Yugoslavia. As the scene of religious, ethnic and political relations and conflict within the former multinational federation determines the flow and actions, so, for example, accused Pljevljak, both Croat and Muslim. At the end of the wars in the nineties it was very popular among intellectuals and yellow press to relativize the guilt of the pre-war crime and surrender it to forgetfulness. So, the case Pljevljak for a reader is a metaphor of the fate of the whole country.