The Sarajevo time machine by Miroslav Prstojević / Bosnia and Herzegovina / areas / Home
A book published in Sarajevo, in the terrible 1992. A book that survived the Yugoslav and Bosnian shipwreck, and which continues to sail the seas
The book Zaboravljeno Sarajevo [Sarajevo dimenticata] by Miroslav Prstojević came out in early 1992, a year that the benevolent citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the entire region would like “never to happen again” so that what happened that year “never happens to anyone again, not even the wicked “. There are also those, albeit fewer and fewer, who speak of 1992 as the year in which “one brother raised his hand against the other brother”.
I do not have certain data, but I suppose that, while the yugo-boat sank, Prstojević’s book can only be found in bookstores in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Anyway, this book survived the Yugoslav and Bosnian shipwreck, and continues to sail the seas.
Prstojević for many years (before the war, I want to emphasize this) was director of the publishing house of the Sarajevo newspaper Oslobođenje. Graduated in law, Prstojević with his Forgotten Sarajevo seems to have taken many of his closest associates and friends by surprise. This usually happens: those who work and create in silence end up astonishing others with the results of their research. Prstojević had been collecting old Sarajevo postcards dating back to the Austro-Hungarian period for years.
“That era of the Tsars and Caesars, but also of the sultans, kings, beys, cops and censors, albeit at times gloomy, also gave us the first postal services, postcards, seals, stamps and messages written and selected with calligraphic elegance, but also strikes, prisons, persecutions … “, explains Prstojević in the introduction to his book entitled Sarajevese album.
At the end of the introduction the author reveals where and how he found the author and Sara bought the old Jevo postcards in the included book: at flea markets, in antique shops, in private collections in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Subotica, Zagreb , Sarajevo, Ljubljana, Trieste, Istanbul, Munich … the list is still long. In addition to the postcards collected over the years, Prstojević has also included in his book some old postcards kept in the National Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the Museum of the Revolution, in the Library of Gazi-Husrev-bey, as well as in two private collections, that of Magbul Škoro and that of Mehmedalija Telalbašić.
Zaboravljeno Sarajevo however, it is not only a collection of old postcards accompanied by the author’s observations, but also a very peculiar story of a city whose importance on the map of Europe had not escaped Andrić who, like no other travel writer, knew summarize his impressions of Sarajevo in a single sentence that opens one of his essays dedicated to the Bosnian capital: “This is the city”.
That Prstojević’s goal was to offer readers a particular look at the history of Sarajevo is demonstrated not only by the rich bibliography included in the book, including numerous texts – dedicated to Sarajevo, Bosnia, the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. – that the author had analyzed in depth, but also, ee, the content of the book, where each quote has a very specific function above all. It is therefore no coincidence that Professor Ibrahim Tepić, speaking of Zaboravljeno Sarajevo, regards to have observed: “As far as the interpretation of historical facts is concerned, the author has never exploited them; on the contrary, he interpreted them with great skill that has always distinguished him “.
Seven rivers and streams that flow at the foot of the hills, mountains and mountains of Sarajevo – Mošćanica, Dobrinja, Bosna, Koševski potok, Željeznica, Bistrik i Miljacka (no other river in the world is crossed by so many bridges as the Miljacka) – are at the center of “our meeting and story”. “Ours”, says the author with the modesty of those who are aware that without the people who over the centuries have given an important mark to the city of Sarajevo, leaving written evidence of the urban spirit of the city, it would not have been possible to create a so peculiar book come Zaboravljeno Sarajevo.
Zaboravljeno Sarajevo it is a succession of postcards captions, historical facts, legends, folk songs and data on the artistic, cultural and economic development of the city, a succession which, however, is impossible to summarize in a few lines. In this article, conceived as a tribute to Zaboravljeno Sarajevo Thirty years after its first publication – years in which Prstojević’s book has become a real symbol of resistance to oblivion – I will not try to tell in detail what this book offers to an attentive reader, especially to an aware reader gaps in one’s knowledge of the history of the city. I underline this to avoid the clichés about the polyphony of cultures, religions, languages and traditions that makes Sarajevo a unique city in Europe. We find all this in Prstojević’s book, everything and more, expressed however in the best way, that is implicitly.
Reflecting on the importance of old postcards – which Prstojević literally resurrected from oblivion – Ivan Lovrenović wrote that “old postcards, allowing us to travel through time, offer us an intoxicating experience imbued with the evocative power of images and history. Furthermore, a very valuable contribution to the history of communicative phenomena – a discipline still non-existent in our country – to be understood as one of the branches of the history of general culture “.
Miroslav Prstojević has been living in Vienna for 28 years now. You will not find much information about him on the net (since it is a net that, wherever you look at it, seems to prefer big fish). I managed to find only two interviews, one of which in video and an interesting text written by Miljenko Jergovic. If you know one of the former Jugo’s languages you can hear what the author said at least of Zaboravljeno Sarajevo in the aforementioned video interview.
The following is an excerpt from an interview with Prstojević.
“I was born in Trebinje, then I lived for a year in Banat, then in Taurus, Danilovgrad, Titograd, seven years in Osijek, four years in Slavonska Požega, Belgrade and Novi Sad and finally twenty-five years in Sarajevo. My father was a military man, so I moved from one city to another along with my father’s suitcases, but in some cities – such as Novi Sad, Belgrade, Sarajevo, and later also Vienna – I moved without his suitcases (laughs ). I graduated from the Faculty of Law, but I did not choose to study to work as a lawyer, but to acquire legal knowledge. I have never practiced the profession of jurist. We can learn many things on our own, but studying law as a self-taught is impossible, you need to take a course of study. In my life I have changed many cities … “.
In 1995 Prstojević opened a bookshop, called “Mi” [Noi], in via Burggasse 84 in Vienna, filling it with relatively few books – so much so that, according to his own words, he only needed two suitcases and the trunk of the car to transport them – which he had at that moment. Today the “Mi” bookshop is a labyrinth that contains 14 thousand books and is very popular with former Yugoslav citizens, but also with their children and grandchildren looking for books in the language of the former Yugoslavia (Serbo-Croatian or “naški”, our language, as it is often called by those who lived in the former Jugo) to satisfy the hunger of the spirit and soul.
Looking at a photograph of the owner of the “Mi” bookshop, I got the impression that he was a man who was inclined to entertain correspondence exchanges, and so I decided to write to him.
Here are some fragments of my correspondence with Miroslav Prstojević.
After the first edition in 1992, Zaboravljeno Sarajevo it had two reprints, in 1999 and 2010, when it also came out in an English edition (Forgotten Sarajevo), managing to sell more than 10 thousand copies.
“At the end of 1993, a war tour guide called Survival guide in Sarajevo. As far as I know, it was the first and only guide of its kind. I don’t know how many reprints he has had, but let’s talk about good runs. The price of a used copy on Amazon ranges from $ 10 to $ 4990. Two years ago I discovered that there is also a Japanese edition of this book which, from what I understand, had been very successful in Japan and is currently out of print. However, I managed to get a copy. During the war I also wrote the book Sarajevo – Ranjeni grad [Sarajevo – Una città ferita] which, while the conflict was still ongoing, was translated into English, Sarajevo – The wounded cityand then also in German, Sarajevo – Die Verwundete Stadt. All three editions of the book – in our language, in German and in English – were presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1994. The book then had a reprint in German and one in English, selling a total of 17,000 copies. It is my walk through nine circles (the first nine months of the war) accompanied by about four hundred photographs – which I chose according to my personal taste – taken by eight war photographers, all originally from Sarajevo. Here are their names: Emil Grebenar (deceased), Senad Grubelić, Kemal H. Hadžić (he emigrated to America, then returned to Sarajevo), Milomir Kovačević (lives in Paris), Danilo Krstanović (deceased), Rikard Larma (for a some period lived in Israel, currently lives in America), Didije Torše and Miki Uherka “.
In 2006 Prstojević published a book entitled (Ne) zaboravljeni Mostar [Mostar (non) dimenticata]subsequently released also in English with the title Mostar (not) forgotten. “It’s a walk into Mostar’s past, with over three hundred postcards dating back to the Austro-Hungarian period”.
Finally, here is good news for all those who have found something more than an urban chronicle in Miroslav Prstojević’s books. “After seventeen years I went back to a book that I initially conceived as a single volume, but then I realized that there was too much material four and I divided the book into volumes. I decided to name it Kaleidoskop Bosne and Herzegovine – Zametena Zapamćenja [Caleidoscopio della Bosnia Erzegovia – Ricordi nascosti]. It is my walk through forty Bosnian-Herzegovinian cities with which I wanted to tell the story of Bosnia and Herzegovina from a personal perspective. The first volume will focus on ten cities in eastern Bosnia, the second on ten cities in western Bosnia, the third on nine cities in Herzegovina and the fourth on eleven cities in central Bosnia. Each volume will be accompanied by about three hundred postcards dating back to the Austro-Hungarian period. I was unsure how many postcards to include in the book, then decided to limit myself to around 1200 for four volumes. It will be an expensive project and I will have to somehow find the resources necessary for publication. It will not be easy…”.
Zaboravljeno Sarajevodespite everything, it is still today a very peculiar symbol of resistance to oblivion. Moreover, this book was conceived as a gesture of resistance. Unfortunately, it is yet another book – I think you have already understood – that has not yet been translated into Italian. And I stop here. Point.
So here is an anecdote, which Prstojević gladly remembers, dating back to the period before the war, when the author of Zaboravljeno Sarajevo he had to contend with various obstacles in an attempt to complete his Sarajevo time machine. One day Zuko Džumhur said to him: “Let me read what you wrote and remember that the inhabitants of a city never know it as well as those who come from somewhere else, because those who come from elsewhere constantly wonder why in that city certain things exist … “.
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