FROST AND ASHES IN POST-YUGOSLAV TIMES

Text topic: Literature Post-Yugoslav Times: Destinies and Comments

Text author: Fatima Bećarević

Classification and determination of works that could be classified as post-Yugoslav literature would imply detailed systematization of a wide, thematically extensive and extremely interesting literary material of all nations that once belonged to the Yugoslav literary and cultural region. Although literature goes beyond physical boundaries and allows a connection with various peaks and cultural dimensions, our post-Yugoslav literature is close and beyond all the real and fictitious barriers in the works of universal value. The collapse of the Yugoslav society and the systems on which it rests in the novel Frost and Ash by Jasna Šamić is shown from different perspectives, which opens up multiple possibilities for interpretation and analysis. The demolition of one system of values and the establishment of another never involves only individuals, but always, inevitably, reflects on all stakeholders in a society. In such times, women hold a particularly sensitive position in patriarchal systems, being almost always marked as marginal, weaker and subject to subordination. Different strategies of subordination and control are realized through the system of dichotomic establishment of hierarchies which involves conquest of not only the body, but also the subjugation of the spirit and imposing the feelings of guilt. In a time marked by violence and various psychological and physical trauma, Jasna Šamić’s novel has remained unexplored, although the issues it opened up remain fresh and current.