PUBLISHER ABOUT THE BOOK
In Goran Vojnović's new novel Fig, the stories of Aleksandar and Jana, Vesna and Safet, Jadran and Anja and others intertwine. At the center is Jadran, who assembles a larger story from this mosaic in order to understand his own. He does not understand why Anja left their life together. He tries to explain why — allegedly with the help of a suspicious bottle of medicine — his grandfather Aleksandar left. He tries to understand the departure of his grandmother Jana, the disintegration of her memories, her life in the world of dementia. He tries to understand the departure of his father Safet when he disappeared from Ljubljana in the first year of the Balkan War. And his mother Vesna, her inexplicable anger at her grandfather, her silent disappointment in her father. From fragments of memories and knowledge, Jadran assembles the story of his own, family and social past. But when the story is assembled, the causes explained, the motives thought out, the motives revealed, he realizes that the past does not absolve us of responsibility for the future.
