Milorad Pavic | David Albahari | Alexandar Hemon

Milorad Pavić. Though accused of being nationalistic in recent years, Pavić remains one of the most brilliant authors of modern Serbian prose. His novels Dictionary of the Khazars, Landscape Painted With Tea, and Last Love in Constantinople offer one of the most original and intriguing views on Balkan culture found in contemporary literature.

David Albahari. Having worked in Canada over the past decade, this writer authored several excellent novels translated in English: Words Are Something Else (1996), Tsing (1997), Bait (2001), Gotz and Meyer(2003, UK) (2005, US) and Snow Man (2005). In the late 1980s, he lobbied for the legalisation of marijuana use in Serbia, but some of his novels have a similar effect without any of the harmful effects on the health.

Alexandar Hemon. He is one of the Western world’s favourite Serbian authors. When he emigrated from Sarajevo to Chicago, he spoke quite primitive English. Eight years on, his short stories have been published in The New Yorker and the prestigious Best American Short Stories anthology. The first book he wrote in English, The Question of Bruno, was published in 2000. When his novel Nowhere Man came out, an American literary critic admitted that he had to check the dictionary 35 times while reading the book.