For the fifth time in a row, the book fair in Pula hosted the Slavic Garden (Slavenski đardin) programme, organised by the FSK in cooperation with the organisers of the book fair Pula Book Fair(y). This year’s main guests were Bulgarian poet and writer Rene Karabash and Montenegrin writer Andrej Nikolaidis.
The curator of the programme, Ivana Peruško, has chosen for this year’s Slavic Garden authors who give voice to maladjusted heroes and write about the “power of the weak” in their books. In dialogue with Ivana Peruško, Rene Karabash, the second Bulgarian writer to appear in Pula in the Slavic Garden programme, presented her poetic novel “She Who Remains”, in which she creates the ambivalent character of a sworn virgin, a “burrnesha”, a victim of cruel ancient codes of conduct. Andrej Nikolaidis, whose novel “Mimesis” is included in the Montenegrin list of the Hundred Slavic Novels collection, presented his latest short novel “Anthony is Abandoning God”, in which the protagonist finds a kind of satisfaction in his voluntarily adopted marginal position.
The programme also included a round table discussion entitled “Uncategorized: from Sworn Virgins to Heavy Workers”, in which Ivona Orlić, Director of the Ethnographic Museum of Istria in Pazin, participated alongside the two authors mentioned above. Orlić was the first Istrian guest of the Slavic Garden, and spoke about the importance of women’s work in Istria in her capacity as one of the authors of the exhibition “Not All is Rosy in Istria: Women and Work in Istria”.
