Dunav: P.S. 1991. vukovarske razglednice
A moving and poignant chronicle of the siege and destruction of Vukovar in 1991 through 57 short "postcard" chapters. Pavličić does not write from the perspective of an "ordinary" Zagreb resident who spent the summer of 1991 in Vukovar, and then followed
Each “postcard” is a dedication to some detail, person or moment: an old photograph of the Danube, the Vukovar water tower, a neighbor who stayed to defend her apartment, a doctor who didn’t want to leave, a boy who dreamed of the sea, the ruined church of St. Philip and James, the smell of bread from a bakery that no longer exists… The author subtly notes how normal life is dying out day by day, and the city is becoming hell. Pavličić does not delve into pathos or political analysis – he writes quietly, almost in a whisper, with the incredible precision of a survivor’s sense of guilt. Here, the Danube is both a real river and a symbol of something that carries and takes away everything: lives, the city, memory.
The book ends with a quiet “P.S.” – the author returns to the devastated Vukovar in 1998 and realizes that the city survived in the people who are rebuilding it. One of the most moving Croatian books about the Homeland War; lyrical, unobtrusive and unbearably painful.
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