Nothing belongs to anyone (Ništa Nije Ničije)
MQ Writer-in-Residence Bojan Savić Ostojić
„The phenomenon of book-eating, which is an original concept appearing in this book, is a specific monomania urging the narrator to purchase used literary goods for a risible price. While following the circulation of a used book, one can trace a possible ’metaphysics of a market booth’. The narrator is thus represented as adoptive parent of abandoned Literature.“ (Momčilo Žunić, Polja magazine, March-April 2021).
The narrator of this novel, obsessed with old and abandoned books, spends most of his days strolling through Belgrade flea markets. He is a self-proclaimed „book-eater“ („bibliožder“) who mainly finds pleasure in bargaining. Nevertheless, what he finds on these markets – Kalenić, Zemun, Bubanj potok, Novi Beograd, or Zvezdara – is often a piece of treasure that, in some other context, could find a more appropriate place in a museum or a public archive.
As he digs around the findings from other people’s cellars – who happen sometimes to be famous Yugoslav writers or artists – he completely forgets about a temporary departure of his girlfriend, whose absence keeps prolonging throughout the book. At the same time, his relationship with an old friend, Laki, is starting to deteriorate as the narrator becomes aware that the latter is using flea market books in order to resell them, which the narrator finds unacceptable.
Originally published in 2020 by Kontrast editions (Belgrade), the book is translated in German by Mascha Dabitsch, and published in a coproduction between ETA Verlag (Berlin) and Kontrast in 2024.
Hosted by Maša Dabić
In cooperation with the BMEIA
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 by Jan Dutoit in 2023), Vreme vode (2023) and most recently Lusi (2025; "Vital" Award for Novel of the Year).
He has translated more than forty titles from French, among which authors such as Emmanuel Bove, Samuel Beckett, Cioran, Agota Kristof, Annie Ernaux, Valerie Mréjen, Edouard Levé and many others. His translation of Cioran's Notebooks 1957-1972 (2025) has won the Award of the City of Belgrade (2026) in field of literature and translation.
Maša Dabić, born in Sarajevo, studied translation studies (English and Russian) in Innsbruck, Edinburgh, St Petersburg and Vienna. She translates literature from the Balkans and teaches Russian interpreting and translation at the University of Vienna. In her debut novel *Reibungsverluste* (published in 2017 by Edition Atelier), she explored the role of interpreting in psychotherapy.
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