Zemun, Belgrade, Serbia / Photo by Nikola Cirkovic / Unsplash

Serbian autofiction written by women has flourished in the last two decades, functioning as a surprising generational political commentary.

Almost every time I recently asked for a novel recommendation in Belgrade, Serbia, booksellers would meet me with a sigh. Then, a barely perceptible eye roll would follow, with the suggestion for a book written by a woman: “It’s autofiction, you know.” I haven’t read contemporary Serbian literature intensely since college days, when both economics and a desire to spread my wings prompted me to leave the country, but these reactions were as amusing as they were intriguing. Besides, they were so nonchalantly dismissive that I grew to expect them, recognizing in their recurrence almost a challenge that needs to be accepted.

It turns out, the Serbian novel of the early twenty-first century is fascinating: it’s mostly written by women, urban and short autofiction dominates, while the last thirty years of history are an inevitable background for personal narratives. Although the production is enormous and the novels written by female authors rule the market, their cultural and academic importance is not recognized: everybody reads them, they are everywhere, but barely anybody seriously discusses them.

Everybody reads them, they are everywhere, but barely anybody seriously discusses them. 

In an environment in which public intellectuals still have considerable clout—the legacy of the socialist era—that approach is puzzling until one grasps that Serbian history of the last few decades is as turbulent as its current political situation is chaotic. It is as if there is too much history. In short, Serbia is one of the succession states of the former Yugoslavia, which, before disintegrating into six independent entities, kaboomed into armed conflicts from 1991 to 1995. Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević became an international household name of nationalistic politics. The Balkans were in all the headlines. (Well-intended Americans of a certain age still ask me if Milošević’s war is raging when they learn where I come from.) 

While Serbia didn’t have a war on its territory, the country was devastated by almost ten years of economic sanctions and one of the worst inflationary economies in world history. The NATO bombing, which was supposed to encourage Milošević to cede power and help Kosovo establish independence in 1999, further damaged the already impoverished economy. When Milošević was finally voted out in 2000, the democratic government lasted only twelve years. Many left the country, like I did. 

Since then, the current president of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, has been strengthening his grip, often described as “pro-European nationalist.” In 2025, for more than half a year, Serbian universities were closed: in an attempt to force Vučić and his government to resign, in November 2024 students announced “a blockade” (no classes) of all the universities; the professors who supported them weren’t paid for months. The protests are still simmering. And, yet life went on, deeply segregated and seemingly unchanged, undetected by apparently anyone but those affected by it. These days, Serbia is not in the news. But, news has been in its literature.

These days, Serbia is not in the news. But, news has been in its literature.

History in the novels is mostly presented as traumatic, forming a sociopolitical backdrop for character development (1990s), interspersed by nostalgia for the ex-Yugoslavia—commonly, symbolized by vacations in Croatia. After the disintegration of the country, Serbs lost their coast: they need to travel abroad for their summer vacation, commonly to Greece, Turkey, Montenegro, or Croatia. That is radically different from the Serbian official rhetoric and the dominant discourse that promotes national values and associates them with the conflicts of the 1990s, and which is skeptical toward the heritage of the former Yugoslavia as well as female authorship. Authors like Neda Bjelanović, Ana Marija Grbić, Maja Iskra, Milena Marković, and Tanja Stupar-Trifunović create a paradigm that hadn’t existed in Serbian literature. Born in the 1970s and during the 1980s, their approach to the novel as a personal chronicle and political commentary presents a critical generational reflection on Serbia’s complex identity in the last few decades. 

But, at the same time, autofiction allows the characters (and the authors themselves) to express their strong, emotional reactions about the environment and their private lives that are conditioned by the political chaos of the country. Inevitably, the characters’ lives are broken and hard, even though it’s sometimes challenging to accept their justification of random sex, drugs, and self-harm due to political hopelessness as well as the war—which was happening outside the country—as a validation for parental negligence or peer bullying. Almost collectively obsessed with Fyodor Dostoyevsky and American cowboy boots, which supposedly signal the wide range of the characters’ interests, those concerns are at times limited to the Belgrade middle class, unsettled and, surprisingly, self-centered despite its quest for intellectualism and cosmopolitanism. But the war is to blame for all these issues. The existential baggage cannot be dismissed; however, one can only write about it in the manner in which the female authors write. 

Deca (Children), by Marković, and Crveni krovovi (Red roofs), by Bjelanović, most effectively navigate this overlap between the political and private. They are my two favorite novels. I devoured them both, captivated by Deca’s unusual rhythm and Crveni krovovi’s lyricism. 

Deca is one of a few contemporary texts that destabilizes genre definitions and was even adapted into a modern opera, a sought-after performance at Belgrade’s National Theater. Although the text was awarded the prestigious NIN Award in 2021—the national equivalent of the Booker or, for instance, the National Book Award—and therefore acknowledged as the Serbian novel of that year, it is in a fact a long poem in free verse and without any standard punctuation, written in the colloquial Belgrade lingo enriched by phrases from national epic poetry. The protagonist narrates her private history, centered on her baby with physical and mental challenges, and the history of Serbia since World War II through the chronicle of her extended family. Such a record is not only marked by the constant changes of political systems but also by a switch from the rural to urban milieus, which leaves those affected feeling constantly maladjusted and displaced: “famous warriors left to the capitol / moved into big houses and apartments / small warriors stayed in the village /still armed.”

Deca is one of a few contemporary texts that destabilizes genre definitions, and was even adapted into a modern opera, a sought-after performance at Belgrade’s National Theater.

Wars are cyclical, marking the lives of different generations: “when the grandma was little there was a war / she was supposed to take care of her little sister / and an Italian tank ran over her.” The historical instability, according to Marković, means that pedophilia and child abuse are tolerated, in addition to the intimidation, abandon, disrespect, physical and verbal aggression of both adults and children. In that sense, it is not surprising for Marković—even though it’s tragic—that generations are incessantly facing violence and wars, without any hope to break away from the repetitiveness. Her subject says, referring to the early 1990s, that “now I’m studying and it’s such a / beautiful summer and the war is close and far.” Judging by the first twenty or so pages of the book, it is obvious that neither the summer will be great, nor will the protagonist’s youth be carefree.

Bjelanović, conversely, is ready to let go of the past. Crveni krovovi (2024) is a farewell letter to the heroine’s first love, youth, and the war in Bosnia that she experienced as a middle school student in Sarajevo. The fact that she is also a decade younger than Marković causes a different set of anxieties typical of a younger generation. The protagonist is a literature student in Belgrade, where she came to study from Bosnia—similar to Bjelanović—and after a failed oral exam on a particularly hot day when walking over the bridge seems the best option to reach her apartment across the river, a young punk tries to rob her. He has a knife but is reluctant to use it, and the character, similar to Scheherazade, seduces him with stories about her wartime upbringing. An urban youth, possibly with a drug problem and admittedly from a dysfunctional family, he is mesmerized by the stories about the world he’s never experienced. About four hours by car, Sarajevo and its battles seem to be in another universe. 

However, it’s not only the protagonist’s stories that are seductive; it’s their style. Her language is beautiful, almost baroque with modern twists, and she’s particularly gentle to her family, which tried to provide a sense of normalcy for the kids, amidst the bombs and war psychosis, while self-placating with sedatives and rakija. The protagonist is funny and gentle, as understanding of the misfit as she is of her parents and cousins, and it’s quite possible that, in some other circumstances, the two of them would be at least friends. Remarkably, Bjelanović’s story focuses on ethnic Serbs in Bosnia—commonly seen as the war instigators and still rarely the literary focus—who because of their faith in the system, patriotism, and political naïveté end up being refugees in their own homeland. (Stupar-Trifunović has a similar approach in her latest novel, Duž oštrog noža leti ptica [2024; Along a sharp knife a bird flies], about a Serbian ethnic family in Croatia, which was shortlisted for the 2024 NIN.) Bjelanović is disinterested in debating historical circumstances; instead, the narrative functions as the protagonist’s closure to a young adult’s life that was influenced by ethnic fighting. 

This change was almost epiphanic, especially after a few decades of (professional) absence. In the early 2000s, when I was last actively following the literary scene, men dominated the Serbian novel; the topics were cosmic (in range), Byzantine (historically), and nationalistic (identity formation). Female authors mostly focused on romances, staying away from politics and historical commentaries, guarding and nurturing their target audiences. There must be a foundational shift, induced by the daily grind of innate and life-changing decisions conditioned by decades of debatable political choices. However, my friend, a reputable national publisher, responded to my long and enthusiastic overview of contemporary Serbian literature and the role of female authors like this: “Women have never been more present in literature, but literature has never been less important.”

Carson-Newman University