Stijn Vervaet is Associate Professor in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian and Balkan Studies at the University of Oslo. In this episode, he joins Karin Kukkonen in a conversation about constructions of cultural memory and visions of the past in the Balkan literary tradition. They talk about witnessing, counter-memory, testimony and survival accounts, and discuss how authors make use of the imaginative and symbolic dimensions of literature in order to reconstruct alternative narratives of the past.

The reading recommendation from Stijn Vervaet: 

Danilo Kiš, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich. Translation: Et gravmæle for Boris Davidovitsj (nb.no).

Daša Drndić, Trieste. Translation: Trieste - dokumentarisk roman (aschehoug.no).

Stijn Vervaet’s book Holocaust, War and Transnational Memory (routledge.com). 

Written alternative