The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Sahib, by Nenad Velickovic´
reviewed by Ana Lucic

Untitled document

Nenad Velickovic´. Sahib. Stubovi Kulture, Serbia, 2002. 176 pp. €5.00.

A young Englishman comes to postwar Bosnia, which lingers between “a preserve and a colony,” to work on the implementation of Western principles and policies. Travel to another country and meeting with a new culture, as we have seen in E. M. Forster’s Passage to India and Room with a View, rarely goes without at least a slight transformation of the newcomer. The young and nameless Englishman is no exception. The Englishman’s e-mails to his male lover back in England unfold before our eyes, showing us the rigidity, stereotypes, and ideology in which we are all immersed when trying to understand the Other. At the end of the book, there is a translator’s note telling us that the e-mail messages are a documentary thing, not invented stuff. What we were hoping was a deliberate exaggeration (the preposterous, arrogant, and ignorant nature of the Englishman) on the part of the writer turns out to be a translation of real e-mail messages, with only the names of the protagonists changed.

The meeting of the Orient with the Occident serves as a good source for all sorts of humorous situations, misunderstandings, and witticisms, with which Velickovic´’s book abounds. Yet what Velickovic´ seems to be concentrating on most is showing us how the encounter with the new culture is always a meeting with the Other, something inevitably inferior, lower than the subject itself. Sahib, at times, becomes a Swiftian satire, having as its main target the colonizing policies behind the rhetoric of liberating and democratizing nations. However, Velickovic´ is far from idealizing the state of affairs in prewar Bosnia. His satire is also directed at the contradictions and shortcomings of the previous socialist and communist regimes. What foreign organizations in Bosnia seem to be mostly preoccupied with is finding techniques to dissuade young people from immigrating to Western countries, or, in other words, preventing the “weeds” from Bosnia from implementing themselves on Western soil. Foreign organizations are creating only the illusion that they are doing something worthwhile for the war-ravaged society, while in reality they are busy creating surreal and impossible projects for the “country’s benefit.” The only product, says the main protagonist of Sahib (in one of his half-serious, half-joking musings), over which the developed countries of the world still do not have a monopoly and which Bosnia can produce, is blood. If Bosnia exported blood, this would probably turn out to be beneficial for both Bosnians and other, more developed countries.

Velickovic´’s book leaves us guessing what good comes out of today’s mingling of the nations and what great migrations of populations bring when our efforts to perceive and experience foreign culture as anything besides simply the Other are hindered and thwarted in advance by the limits of our own subjectivity. In an age “when dollars can shut up every mouth,” even bitter satire does not have the effect it once had.


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Sahib, by Nenad Velickovic´ reviewed by Ana Lucic Untitled document Nenad Velickovic´. Sahib. Stubovi Kulture, Serbia, 2002. 176 pp. €5.00. A young Englishman comes to postwar Bosnia, which lingers between “a preserve and a colony,” to work on the implementation of Western principles and policies. Travel to another country and meeting with a new culture, as we have seen in E. M. Forster’s Passage to India and Room with a View, rarely goes without at least a slight transformation of the newcomer. The young and nameless Englishman is no exception. The Englishman’s e-mails to his male lover back in England unfold before our eyes, showing us the rigidity, stereotypes, and ideology in which we are all immersed when trying to understand the Other. At the end of the book, there is a translator’s note telling us that the e-mail messages are a documentary thing, not invented stuff. What we were hoping was a deliberate exaggeration (the preposterous, arrogant, and ignorant nature of the Englishman) on the part of the writer turns out to be a translation of real e-mail messages, with only the names of the protagonists changed. The meeting of the Orient with the Occident serves as a good source for all sorts of humorous situations, misunderstandings, and witticisms, with which Velickovic´’s book abounds. Yet what Velickovic´ seems to be concentrating on most is showing us how the encounter with the new culture is always a meeting with the Other, something inevitably inferior, lower than the subject itself. Sahib, at times, becomes a Swiftian satire, having as its main target the colonizing policies behind the rhetoric of liberating and democratizing nations. However, Velickovic´ is far from idealizing the state of affairs in prewar Bosnia. His satire is also directed at the contradictions and shortcomings of the previous socialist and communist regimes. What foreign organizations in Bosnia seem to be mostly preoccupied with is finding techniques to dissuade young people from immigrating to Western countries, or, in other words, preventing the “weeds” from Bosnia from implementing themselves on Western soil. Foreign organizations are creating only the illusion that they are doing something worthwhile for the war-ravaged society, while in reality they are busy creating surreal and impossible projects for the “country’s benefit.” The only product, says the main protagonist of Sahib (in one of his half-serious, half-joking musings), over which the developed countries of the world still do not have a monopoly and which Bosnia can produce, is blood. If Bosnia exported blood, this would probably turn out to be beneficial for both Bosnians and other, more developed countries. Velickovic´’s book leaves us guessing what good comes out of today’s mingling of the nations and what great migrations of populations bring when our efforts to perceive and experience foreign culture as anything besides simply the Other are hindered and thwarted in advance by the limits of our own subjectivity. In an age “when dollars can shut up every mouth,” even bitter satire does not have the effect it once had.

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