Zmijski skot: roman iz današnjeg života

Snake's Brood: A Novel from Today's Life is the third novel by Croatian writer Fedy Martinčić (Sinj, 1902 – Zagreb, 1982), who appeared on the literary scene in 1928 with the novel Her Fate.

The novel belongs to the social novel genre of the interwar period. The author naturalistically, with a touch of pessimism, depicts the torturous life of the working class in a big city, focusing on poverty, exploitation, moral decay, alcoholism, prostitution and difficult family circumstances. The title Snake's Brood metaphorically suggests a toxic, degenerate environment in which the disenfranchised layers of society are born and live.

The work stands out for its realistic depiction of everyday life in the lower social classes, with an emphasis on women's destinies, family dramas and the influence of economic circumstances on morality and human relationships. It was received by critics in a mixed way: some praised it for its commitment and the theme of the labor issue, while a part of the literary scene (e.g. Slavko Kolar in a polemic) considered it dilettante. Despite this, the novel received the Croatian Writers' Association Award in 1936, which testifies to its visibility in the literary public of the time.

Fedy Martinčić wrote in the tradition of realistic-naturalistic prose with influences from European models (e.g. Émile Zola). Her style is direct, socially engaged and focused on the problems of women, marriage, motherhood and class differences. In The Offspring of the Snake she continues to deal with the topics that preoccupied her – the position of women in a patriarchal society and the influence of poverty on human destiny.

The book represents an important, although today less well-known, contribution to Croatian interwar social literature. Like Feda Martinčić's other works, after 1945 it was marginalized, due to not fitting into the socialist realist canon, and it reappears only in antiquarian circles and researches of women's literature. Zmijski skot is a document of the time that testifies to the social contrasts of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the attempts of women writers to talk about the problems of the working class and women's emancipation.