Salon.com > serbia

Serbia to approve Kosovo reconciliation deal

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 18:00:00 +0000

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbia's ruling parties say they will support a potentially landmark agreement to normalize relations with breakaway Kosovo that could end years of tensions and put both states on a path to European Union membership.

The prime ministers of Serbia and Kosovo reached a tentative EU-mediated deal Friday that would give Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership authority over rebel Kosovo Serbs. In return, the minority Serbs would get wide autonomy within Kosovo.

The deal still has to be approved by Serbia and Kosovo. Leaders of the two main ruling parties in Serbia said Sunday they will support the deal at a government session scheduled for Monday.

The agreement has triggered outrage among Serb nationalists.

Aleksandar Hemon: “I cannot stand that whole game of confession. I have nothing to confess and I do not ask for redemption”

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 23:00:00 +0000

Though I've known Aleksandar Hemon over the years — we first met at the book party for his second work of fiction, "Nowhere Man," at his publisher's house in New York — I've only had a chance to really sit and talk with him in Chicago, my native city and his adopted hometown. I interviewed him in 2009 for Bookforum, about "Love and Obstacles," his last collection of stories, when he told me he hated memoir — which made me laugh, especially since his editor published James Frey, whose loose interpretation of the form landed the "memoirist" in hot water with the formidable Oprah Winfrey. But I remember thinking, as we parted ways, if anyone should be writing memoir, it should be Hemon, a man who has led at least two distinct lives: one in Sarajevo just before the siege, and then his life as an accidental, now naturalized citizen of Chicago, after a junket to the States left him stranded here, unable to return to his war-torn home. And while he has expertly mined this bisected existence for his fiction, I was eager as a reader and as an acquaintance, to learn the "true stories," as they call them in Bosnia (Hemon explains there are no words in Bosnian for "fiction" or "nonfiction," per se).

Weird news: Vampire on the loose in Serbia

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 22:28:00 +0000

ZAROZJE, Serbia — Get your garlic, crosses and stakes ready: a bloodsucking vampire is on the loose.

Or so say villagers in the tiny western Serbian hamlet of Zarozje, nestled between lush green mountain slopes and spooky thick forests. They say rumors that a legendary vampire ghost has awakened are spreading fear - and a potential tourist opportunity - through the remote village.

A local council warned villagers to put garlic in their pockets and place wooden crosses in their rooms to ward off vampires, although it appeared designed more to attract visitors to the impoverished region bordering Bosnia.

Many of the villagers are aware that Sava Savanovic, Serbia's most famous vampire, is a fairy tale. Still, they say, better to take it seriously than risk succumbing to the vampire's fangs.

"The story of Sava Savanovic is a legend, but strange things did occur in these parts back in the old days," said 55-year-old housewife Milka Prokic, holding a string of garlic in one hand and a large wooden stake in another, as an appropriately moody mist rose above the surrounding hills. "We have inherited this legend from our ancestors, and we keep it alive for the younger generations."