Isušena kaljuža
*The Drained Cesspool* (1911) is the first modern Croatian novel. It follows an intellectual named Eduard who wanders through Europe, battling hypocritical petty-bourgeois society, his own dark impulses, and the meaninglessness of existence.
The novel Isušena kaljuža (The Dried-Up Quagmire) by Janko Polić Kamov is a masterpiece of Croatian Modernism and the early avant-garde, written with exceptional psychological depth and a radical defiance of the social norms of the time. The protagonist, Eduard Živković (Giga Barić), serves as the archetype of a restless, alienated intellectual and rebel. The narrative follows his inner turmoil, his wanderings through European metropolises (such as Barcelona), and his constant conflict with the false morality and hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie, as well as the conventions of a petty-bourgeois environment. Eduard interrogates the meaning of life, art, religion, and love, all the while laying bare his own psyche and confronting his self-destructive impulses. In terms of both style and theme, the novel far surpasses the works of its contemporaries. Kamov employs expressionistic and naturalistic modes of expression, interior monologue, and a fragmentary structure—anticipating European existentialism and modernist prose. Isušena kaljuža is a dark, uncompromising, and visionary study of human alienation that explores the boundaries of freedom and individualism.
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