Vjetrogonja Babukić i njegovo doba
A contemporary picaresque novel, a sequel to "Hercules", follows the adventures of Vjetrogonja Babukić – a vagabond, outlaw, and anti-hero with no reputation – through the chaotic era of the 1990s.
Fleeing Zagreb at the beginning of the war in the 1990s from his job in the JNA, a pregnant mistress and social condemnation, Babukić, wandering the roads of Europe and the Balkans, becomes a mirror of our fears: obsession with sex, gossip, drink and food, loss of identity in a globalized world.
His adventures – from Ljubljana airports, through Viennese cafes and Sarajevo markets, to the outskirts of Zagreb – are told in a series of episodes full of black humor, irony and Jergović's masterful prose that mixes reality with fantasy.
Babukić, "the last man from Babylon", is a symbol of individual survival in an era of collective trauma: wars, migrations and moral decay. He meets eccentric characters – from war profiteers to lost intellectuals – as he seeks refuge in random relationships and false identities. The novel explores the need to preserve the self in a contradictory world, where every step is an escape and every love is fleeting.
Jergović, through a neo-pictorial structure, criticizes contemporary society: obsession with material things, emotional emptiness and the disappearance of solidarity, but also celebrates the resilience of the spirit. The work is a picaresque compendium – a witty, melancholic portrait of an era where the hero hides in the wind of change.
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