Mythistory and Narratives of the Nation in the Balkans

The volume edited by Tatjana AleksiÄ++ contains superb essays illuminating the complexities of this region, from Greece, Bosnia, Albania, post-Yugoslavia or the Danube, combined with the most relevant theoretical articulation of the current geopolitical and postcolonial thought, narrative and film theory. The volume probes the founding myths of the area and the historical cataclysms and narratives that develop on their background, from classical Greece to modern times. As such,...
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The volume edited by Tatjana AleksiÄ++ contains superb essays illuminating the complexities of this region, from Greece, Bosnia, Albania, post-Yugoslavia or the Danube, combined with the most relevant theoretical articulation of the current geopolitical and postcolonial thought, narrative and film theory. The volume probes the founding myths of the area and the historical cataclysms and narratives that develop on their background, from classical Greece to modern times. As such, Mythistory and Narratives of the Nation in the Balkans is an indispensable book. Dragan KujundziÄ++, University of Florida, editor of The Other Europe and the Translation of National Identity (2003), and the author of Returns of History (1997). The collection Mythistory and Narratives of the Nation in the Balkans succeeds admirably in its goal of "providing new perspectives on Balkan nationalism without falling into either self-denouncing or self-vindicating discourse." The contributors examine the efforts of Balkan novelists and intellectuals to "write their nations" in the face of centuries of geopolitical and discursive domination by empires to the east and the west: European and American, Ottoman and Soviet. They pose hard questions regarding the adequacy of available narratives of Balkan nationalism. And they invite us to think of nationalism itself as complex and politically polyvalent mode of being. Both students of Balkan literature and culture and students of "the poetics of the nation" will find much to appreciate and ponder here. John McClure, Professor of English, Rutgers University Just at the moment when discussion of the Balkans seems no longer 'fashionable', this collection comes to prove the centrality of the Balkan problematic both to considerations of contemporary politics and interdisciplinarity itself. The book is an exemplary instance of multiple idioms of interpretation that nonetheless spring from the subject matter itself. *Mythistory and Narratives of the Nation in the Balkans* is a worthy companion to its predecessor, *Balkan as Metaphor*, and is certain to become standard reference in the debates around globality and nationalism. Stathis Gourgouris, Professor of Comparative Literature, UCLA, author of *Dream Nation* (1996) and *Does Literature Think?* (2003).