Aleksandar Petrov. Kao zlato u vatri. Belgrade. Signature. 1998. 421 pages. ID 69369100.

Mihailovich, Vasa D.

The unfortunate recent events in the Balkans could not help but find echoes in contemporary Serbian literature. In his novel Kao zlato u vatri (Like Gold in Fire) Aleksandar Petrov does not deal with those events directly. His aim is rather to show what terrible misfortunes have befallen the Balkan people in the last hundred years and what price they have had to pay for the mistakes of "false Messiahs"- domestic and foreign, Nazi and communist, and above all the politicians and national leaders. The victims are all ethnic groups-Serbs, Croats, Muslims, and, most of all, Jews.

Kao zlato u vatri describes the history of Sarajevo and Belgrade Jews from the end of the last century to the present. They were, like smoke, almost blown away from the homes they had begun to build on Balkan soil five centuries ago, not deserving such a fate for any reason. In its broad sweep, Petrov's novel attains a certain universal character and significance. Of particular interest is the fate of the Russians, the narrator's ancestors, who were stranded in the Balkans by the October Revolution. Fleeing one disaster, they experienced another in the Balkan cauldron. Some of them, along with those whom they were fleeing, were nabbed by special units of the Red Army and sent to Siberia. In a word, the reader discovers the historical roots of today's calamities.

Besides the novel's themes, its structure is interesting as well. A kind of novel within the novel, "War and Peace," written by one of the protagonists, Laura Vujanov, who is Jewish on her mother's side and Serbian and Russian on her father's, is accompanied by her letters to the narrator before she began the writing of her own novel. The chapters are symmetrically arranged according to the scheme 13+5+13+5+13, forming a unique circle whereby at the conclusion the long tale returns to the beginning. From among forty-nine chapters, several are especially noteworthy. "Usna harmonika" (The Harmonica) describes the destruction of the Jews in the camp at Jasenovac at a time when the commander was Dinko {aki (whose trial was in preparation as this novel was being published). "Srpski narodni savez" (Serbian National Federation) deals with American Serbs and their oldest fraternal organization in Pittsburgh. "Nestala" (Vanished) bespeaks a fitting finale to this Balkan tragedy.

The final chapter, "Zalazak" (The Sunset), hints at all the human psyche associates with sunset. On the other hand, it also prophesies future tragedies, as in the description of the bombings of Belgrade during World War II and the projections forward to present-day Belgrade. Although all participants in this colossal drama are losers, the hope is that the appearance of the black sun at the end of the novel does not augur another deadly night but rather a rebirth and better future at the threshold of the new century.

In a modernistic and at times bravura way, Petrov connects decades and centuries, distant parts of the world and continents with characters tossed about the earth without either their desire or their knowledge. A prominent poet, Petrov possesses a lyric talent which comes through in delicate descriptions of nature and people, enriching the narrative tone substantially. Altogether, Kao zlato u vatri is one of the outstanding novels of contemporary Serbian literature.

Vasa D. Mihailovich

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill