Books » Knjige | 45 F ROM T HE WR I T E R ’ S P E RSP ECT I VE : DUŠAN M I K L J A Travelling as life itself, cities as destiny All the cities in which we’ve lived predetermine our life’s journey. But this boils down to a cause-and-effect relationship, because cities make people just as much as people make cities. By tracing the contours of cities, I sketched the map of my inner life IHADTHEGOODFORTUNE OF BEING INAFRICA during the time that it was freeing itself of the shackles of colonialism, in Italy during the period of the Red Brigades and terrorism, in New York during the build-up to the disintegrationof Yugoslavia, and inBrussels, the seat of the headquarters of both the EU and NATO, during the time of Yugoslav collapse. In my novel Cities as Destiny, there’s almost nothing that’smade up–neither the personalities nor the events.That’s because we live in cities, but cities also live in us. That can be considered literally in this novel, because it was a personal choice to live in the cities where I’ve lived, while it was also something imposed on me by undesired circumstances. ON THE NOVEL In genre terms, this novel can be experienced in numerous ways – as prose, as a testimony to the seismic social upheavals of recent decades, as a description of cities, though not in the sense of a travelogue, but rather in the sense of destiny, and, perhaps most of all, as a personal confession. In various cities, I investigatewhohas doneme harm, but I also seek an antidote, taking into consideration good and nice things that I’ve experienced. ONCITIES I actually wonder how much the cities we’ve been to, spent time residing in, or had a permanent address in, are alive inside us. How can we describe a scene to someone if that scene isn’t already “caught” inside us; how can we lead them through the streets of a city; show them the people there; describe their customs and habits?That’s becausewe live in cities just as much as they live in us. That choice is sometimes random, sometimes voluntary, occasionally imposed by social conditions or forced by circumstance. It isn’t always equally agreeable, but frommy point of view, as a man who’s engaged in writing, I’m equally grateful for those that have brought me joy and those that have exposedme BRIŽ / BRUGES FOTO: Depositphotos / Bloodua
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