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josiegz 's review for:
Catherine the Great and the Small
by Olja Knežević
I discovered "Catherine the Great and the Small," by Olja Knezevic, on Twitter, thanks to Women in Translation Month, a month I usually just call "August." It spurred me to pick up and read a number of translated books by women writers that had been sitting on my shelves unread; after reading some short reviews of "Catherine," I ordered this book, which is beautifully written, powerfully drawn yet prickly.
"Catherine the Great and the Small" opens in the summer of 1978, when Catherine "the small" is playing "guerillas and gendarmes" with her friends in the back alleys of Titograd (now Podgorica), the capital of Montenegro, then part of Communist Yugoslavia and named for Josip Broz Tito, the President of Yugoslavia from 1953 to 1980. It seems like a carefree summer, until Catherine's mother, an artist and art teacher, dies of cancer in the opening pages.
From then on Catherine is raised by her formidable Granny, the widow of a partisan who fought with Tito during World War II. It is Granny who offers stability and guidance to Catherine as she navigates her teenage and young adult years with her best friend Milica, a talented aspiring actress who descends into a drug-addled existence after moving to Belgrade for drama school.
Catherine is a model student, studying economics in Belgrade, when the breakdown of Yugoslavia, under the leadership of Slobodan Milošević (later charged by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) with war crimes in connection to the wars in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo) begins to intrude. Much of the story takes place in the backdrop of this war, as Catherine's friends are conscripted or flee the country. Catherine herself struggles to retain some nugget of happiness in the midst of the madness; working in a department store in Titograd, she arranges for Milica to appear in an advertising campaign for Italian shoes. The billboards survive Milica and seem like a metaphor for the ruined Yugoslavia:
"The advertising posters and the first billboards in town - with Milica's lovely figure, stretching contentedly on the beach, on the grass, on the parquet floor, surrounded by shoes and sandals - faded and began looking like a cruel joke, a sad reminder of the many possibilities for which we were still too backwards, unprepared.
Our country was coming apart at the seams from an illness whose cause I didn't understand."
Catherine survives this trauma and others: She makes a life for herself as a writer and a mother, now Catherine "the Great," because, as Milica says, "In the depths of your existence you find light. Waiting for you at the very bottom is this tiny glowing ball and you take it in your hands and bring it to the surface. You're a mermaid, but not me."
"Catherine the Great and the Small" opens in the summer of 1978, when Catherine "the small" is playing "guerillas and gendarmes" with her friends in the back alleys of Titograd (now Podgorica), the capital of Montenegro, then part of Communist Yugoslavia and named for Josip Broz Tito, the President of Yugoslavia from 1953 to 1980. It seems like a carefree summer, until Catherine's mother, an artist and art teacher, dies of cancer in the opening pages.
From then on Catherine is raised by her formidable Granny, the widow of a partisan who fought with Tito during World War II. It is Granny who offers stability and guidance to Catherine as she navigates her teenage and young adult years with her best friend Milica, a talented aspiring actress who descends into a drug-addled existence after moving to Belgrade for drama school.
Catherine is a model student, studying economics in Belgrade, when the breakdown of Yugoslavia, under the leadership of Slobodan Milošević (later charged by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) with war crimes in connection to the wars in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo) begins to intrude. Much of the story takes place in the backdrop of this war, as Catherine's friends are conscripted or flee the country. Catherine herself struggles to retain some nugget of happiness in the midst of the madness; working in a department store in Titograd, she arranges for Milica to appear in an advertising campaign for Italian shoes. The billboards survive Milica and seem like a metaphor for the ruined Yugoslavia:
"The advertising posters and the first billboards in town - with Milica's lovely figure, stretching contentedly on the beach, on the grass, on the parquet floor, surrounded by shoes and sandals - faded and began looking like a cruel joke, a sad reminder of the many possibilities for which we were still too backwards, unprepared.
Our country was coming apart at the seams from an illness whose cause I didn't understand."
Catherine survives this trauma and others: She makes a life for herself as a writer and a mother, now Catherine "the Great," because, as Milica says, "In the depths of your existence you find light. Waiting for you at the very bottom is this tiny glowing ball and you take it in your hands and bring it to the surface. You're a mermaid, but not me."