Bojan Savić Ostojić

Born in 1983, Bojan Savić Ostojić is a Serbian writer and translator from French. He has published a dozen of books of various genres, among which the prose books such as “Punkt” (2017; published in German translation in 2023), “Ništa nije ničije” (originally published in 2020; Nichts gehört niemandem, translated in German in 2024), “Vreme vode” (2023) and recently Lusi (2025; "Vital" Award for Novel of the Year).

He has translated more than forty titles from French, by authors such as Emmanuel Bove, Samuel Beckett, Cioran, Agota Kristof, Annie Ernaux, Valerie Mrejen, Edouard Levé and many others. His translation of Cioran's “Notebooks” 1957-1972 (2025) has won the Award of the City of Belgrade (2026).

He lives currently in Stara Pazova, Serbia.

I am currently working on a manuscript of novel whose working title is “Maša’s Notebook“.

Its narrator finds a journal on a flea market written by a girl who used to live in a care home for handicapped. Embarked on a research, he is meeting and interviewing the fellow users of the home who knew her or lived with her. The testimonies concerning the girl are intertwined with parts of her journal which is her attempt to write an autobiography. Positioned as listener, the narrator encourages her surviving fellows to tell their own stories.

While attempting to reconstruct the destiny of the girl, the narrator is forced to dedicate himself to the context of care home. This institution, even though it’s held by the State, is not functional: it works in very poor and inadequate conditions. The social aid is insufficient for normal life. These handicapped persons, often orphans, have spent their entire lives in care homes and they have no illusions on their position in the society. The story follows the life and the death of the girl, told through the view of as many witnesses as possible, without a central, omniscient narrator.

The narrator is trying to reach the problematic from inner point of view, without patronizing, without look from the outside, without miserabilism which would destroy its literary value. He is trying to articulate the values of that specific society living in the care home and to follow their own rules, to learn their own language which qualifies the society outside the walls of care home as “normal people“ (“those who are not handicapped“).

Even though the story has tragic accents, what happens inside that society is not always marked by sadness or discouragement. However unwanted and marginal, that specific society of handicapped adults turns out to be a fractal of the entire modern, not only Serbian society.

After “Ništa nije ničije“, this is another project where I am approaching documentary fiction, on the trail of Emmanuel Carrere, Svetlana Alexievich or Jean Hatzfeld. But the form of “Maša’s Notebook“ is fragmentary and polycentric, varying dialogues and descriptions, representing different ways of speaking and points of view. The journal of the deceased girl is its only centralizing element. Even if it is documentary, the text is not overwhelmed with archive materials. Mostly based on oral testimonies, it is finally furthermore turned towards literature.