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A family saga set in MONTENEGRO

22nd July 2020

Catherine the Great and the Small by Olja Knežević – a family saga set in Montenegro.

A family saga set in Montenegro

Catherine the Great and the Small opens in the summer of 1978. It is a hot one. The book is set near Titograd, Montenegro (as Podgorica was then known…). Catherine is making pocket money selling ice cream from a stall on the street. Her life progresses through school until she becomes a student in Belgrade. The story at this stage is a blend of a teenager living and experimenting against the background of the upcoming civil war in Yugoslavia. The Belgrade days are wild – not so much for Catherine herself – but for her cousin Milica, an aspiring actress severely inhibited by a drug habit, and for Siniša, her boyfriend from back home with some demons of his own to deal with.

She moves to London, where she ends up years later as the mother of two children in an abusive relationship. Not a happy person. She returns (in almost the present day) to Montenegro for a funeral. The children are with her, and her husband follows. The country has changed beyond recognition from the 70s and 80s.

Catherine the Great and the Small is the story of one person’s journey through a troubled life. Her family is flawed, her friends are flawed – but she survives. What, though, I found particularly interesting was the development of Montenegro and the contrast between the country of the 70s/80s (part of Tito’s Yugoslavia) and the country in the early 21st century. The old Soviet block – with all its restrictions on life can seem an awful long time ago. The characters are believable and well developed.

Catherine the Great and the Small is a book that explores the profound changes in the Balkans in a very human way. A fascinating social commentary.

Tony for the TripFiction team

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