REMEMBERING GOLI OTOK IN DAVID ALBAHARI’S NOVEL DANAS JE SREDA

Abstract

Since the 2010s, interest in Goli Otok has increased in the successor states of former Yugoslavia. Numerous artistic works deal with the former prison island in the Adriatic Sea, where supposed supporters of the Soviet Union were imprisoned after the break between Tito and Stalin in 1948. One of these works is the novel Danas je sreda (2017) by David Albahari. In the novel, the son learns about the past of his father, who was imprisoned on Goli Otok and now suffers from Parkinson's disease and dementia. However, the father is not only a victim but also a perpetrator himself:  As a party commissioner, he acted brutally, and so he behaved within the family. The first-person narrator did not experience Goli Otok himself but became a secondary witness through his father's narrations. By exploring the narrative strategies for coping with the traumatic past in Danas je sreda, this article aims to shed light on the depiction of Goli Otok in contemporary literature from the region.