DIVAN · Collections
Selected stories — Radoje Domanović
8 published works. Curated collections and their published works.
Open collectionThe Brand
The Brand — Radoje Domanović. A man who bows to a police uniform's discarded button is an unusual guide to a dream. Yet the narrator of The Brand offers this incident as proof of his good character. Before he reaches the strange country where most of the story takes place, his own account has already made obedience look involuntary: hand, head and mouth salute almost without consulting their owner.
Radoje DomanovićSatireeBook · AudiobookThe Leader
The Leader — Radoje Domanović. The Leader is a satirical short story about people who leave a barren homeland in the hope of finding a better life. They choose an unknown man to guide them, taking his silence as proof of wisdom. Domanović follows the process by which ordinary hope becomes unconditional obedience, and a community learns to justify each new disaster.
Radoje DomanovićShort storyeBook · AudiobookI Do Not Understand
I Do Not Understand — Radoje Domanović. The narrator wants to become a soldier. He imagines that patriotic enthusiasm will open the barracks doors and earn him a warm welcome. Instead, his living presence becomes a problem for a military administration whose records say otherwise.
Radoje DomanovićShort storyeBook · AudiobookNo Escape
No Escape — Radoje Domanović. Every editor in Nigde spasa (No Escape) has only a small request. An article on vines, a contribution on raising foals, a brief patriotic story: surely an educated writer can oblige. Their courtesy makes refusal harder, and the narrator’s attempt to find a subject becomes more oppressive than the work itself. What begins with a ruined afternoon grows into a pursuit through streets, shops and finally the countryside.
Radoje DomanovićShort storyeBook · AudiobookThe Abolition of Passions
The Abolition of Passions — Radoje Domanović. A country has ten good men and a population seething with dangerous passions. Reading newspapers, building schools, helping the poor and buying flowers all appear in its catalogue of misconduct. Domanović lets the accusations accumulate in the sober language of official reports until ordinary civic life itself looks like a conspiracy.
Radoje DomanovićShort storyeBook · AudiobookThe Singer’s Easter
A singer can turn private sorrow into public pleasure, but what happens when the sorrow becomes too great to sing? In Pevačev Uskrs (The Singer’s Easter), Radoje Domanović follows Pera through the preparations for a holiday that other households can afford to celebrate. Lambs, new clothes, cakes and painted eggs are ordinary comforts to the people around him.
Radoje DomanovićShort storyeBook · AudiobookThe Slava
The Slava — Radoje Domanović. A rider returning to his village meets a child watching three sheep in the rain. Their conversation turns from work and taxes to the next day's family celebration. The boy expects his mother's preparations to be understood at once; the adult narrator hears in them the effort required to keep a poor household within the circle of ordinary social life.
Radoje DomanovićShort storyeBook · AudiobookA Modern Uprising
A Modern Uprising — Radoje Domanović. A dream carries the narrator a century backwards, but the people and institutions he finds are those of his own day. Ottoman rule and modern bureaucracy occupy the same streets. This deliberate mismatch turns a historical question, how a people might rise against oppression, into an examination of habits that make action endlessly postponable.
Radoje DomanovićShort storyeBook · Audiobook