DIVAN · Genres
Psychological fiction
13 published works. Explore books by literary genre and discover new works.
Before Happiness
Before Happiness — Milica Janković. A young woman begins a diary of emotional awakening, disappointment and the search for a place of her own. Milica Janković explores love, social expectations and the years that precede happiness.
Milica JankovićNoveleBook · AudiobookHe Knows Everything!
He Knows Everything! — Laza Lazarević. The boy who frightens his schoolmates fears only his elder brother. From that small contradiction Lazarević builds a story about affection that has trouble speaking its own name. Vučko's recklessness is almost a public institution; Vidak's authority seems equally settled. Yet the narrator's cheerful recollections keep disturbing the labels he puts on people.
Laza LazarevićShort storyeBookIn the Night
In the Night — Borisav Stanković. In In the Night, the ordinary work of irrigating tobacco opens a space for everything Cveta tries to suppress. As she waits for the water, an encounter and a song restore the love that her social world would not allow. The field is more than a setting: the sound of a hoe, the thirst of the earth, moonlight and distant voices all enter into her remembering.
Borisav StankovićShort storyeBookNotes from the Underground
Notes from the Underground — Fyodor Dostoevsky. An isolated former civil servant challenges confident theories of rational behavior while exposing his own contradictions and resentment. Recollections of humiliation and his encounter with Liza reveal the painful gap between his desire for connection and his impulse to reject it.
Fyodor DostoevskyNovellaeBookPoor Girl
Poor Girl — Simo Matavulj. A sailor returns to a Dalmatian island with a ring, unaware that the woman he loves has died. Matavulj quietly traces hidden affection, grief and a family’s continuing daily life.
Simo MatavuljShort storyeBook · AudiobookStories
Stories — Janko Leskovar. Leskovar’s stories follow people troubled by memories, doubts and unspoken desires. The collection opens with a schoolmaster’s restless inner life in “A Thought of Eternity”.
Janko LeskovarShort story collectioneBook · AudiobookStrange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde — Robert Louis Stevenson. A London lawyer follows the disturbing connection between his friend Dr Henry Jekyll and the violent Edward Hyde. Stevenson’s novella follows a concealed experiment and a struggle between respectability and destructive desires.
Robert Louis StevensonHorroreBookThe Alka Rider
The Alka Rider — Dinko Šimunović. In Dinko Šimunović’s Alkar, the landscape is no passive background to human events. Summer heat, blue haze, the rumble of hooves and the storm wind gradually acquire the force of feelings the characters find hard to express. The Cetina countryside appears peaceful, while its image of its own past is renewed each year in the alka tournament. The story follows what happens when that shared measure of heroism enters the most intimate relationships.
Dinko ŠimunovićShort storyeBookThe Last Stipančićs
The Last Stipančićs — Vjenceslav Novak. The room in which The Last Stipančićs opens is almost sealed against the world. The air is too warm, the furniture too large, and the light too weak. Beyond the windows the bora roars through Senj; inside, a mother watches her daughter and tries to keep suffering at bay. Before the novel tells us how this family once lived, it makes us feel what its remaining life costs.
Vjenceslav NovakNoveleBookThe Rainbow
The Rainbow — Dinko Šimunović. The first sentence of Duga places a town between a river and a wall of cliffs. Almost at once that landscape becomes a measure of freedom. While the adults of Čardaci sleep through the heat and their daughters wait indoors, the boys have the river, the meadows and the sun. Ten-year-old Srna hears that larger world through an open window. Her parents call their restrictions care; her body experiences them as confinement.
Dinko ŠimunovićShort storyeBookThe School Icon
The School Icon — Laza Lazarević. “Our village had a church, and the church had a priest.” From this deceptively simple beginning, Lazarević builds a world in which authority, affection and daily work seem inseparable. The priest belongs to everyone, and everyone belongs, in some measure, to him. When a daughter comes unexpectedly into his life, the village helps to raise her. Her future becomes its shared hope.
Laza LazarevićShort storyeBookThe Wind
The Wind — Laza Lazarević. Janko lives comfortably with his mother and thinks of marriage as something that time and chance will arrange. A visit to the hospital where his friend Joca works brings him face to face with suffering he cannot readily explain away. Recognition, gratitude and desire begin to unsettle the language in which he understands his own life.
Laza LazarevićShort storyeBook · AudiobookWerther
Werther — Laza Lazarević. A spa is a place to recover one’s health, and an excellent place to lose one’s perspective. Lazarević begins by comparing a fashionable visit to the baths with a war: both demand preparation, waste money and end in negotiations at home. Among the officers, officials, card players and self-appointed experts stands Janko, a thirty-year-old man whose feelings still expect the world to behave like a novel.
Laza LazarevićShort storyeBook