Neues Deutchland
Berlin, Germany
October 8, 1999
Year LXIV, No. 235
Page 12
by Irmtraud Gutschke
Mihajlo Kazic lets evil spirits play
UNCERTAINTIES
At the train station in Belgrade, an old man collapses. A stroke. As he dies, he has blue tears in his eyes. Blue tears? Yes,
really! The police found no papers on him. The little boy whom the old man had with him persistently remains silent. But we
know: his name is Ilija and he is to be brought from the Serbian town Pec, to his rich uncle in Brussels. The only thing is,
that his uncle, whose name is Simon Zvicer, has disappeared without a trace. Soon Ilija disappears as well. From a locked
apartment. The Belgrade police inspector, Vladimir Kaiser, who has to solve the case, thinks he is going mad: in his home
(on the twelfth floor!) he sees a boy peeping through his window, his balcony door is knocked at, he can clearly hear children
crying, and a red angel appears in his dream - the same angel he will later see on an icon in Simon Zvicer's study in Brussels.
The Serbian author Mihajlo Kazic loves secretiveness, and he can tell a story thrillingly, as we know from the earlier book
"The Broken Journey". Here also, he leads the plot through countries and times, as if everything is connected on a
deeper level: from Brussels to Belgrade and back, to Los Angeles and throughout the California to Mexico. Strange things happen
all around, and all the time the reader is trying, together with Vladimir Kaiser, to combine things in their thoughts.
But the story-telling playful easiness hides difficulties. "Where are you from?" asks Simon Zvicer's wife a female beggar
in Brussels. "I do not even want to mention this country's name" is her answer. Yugoslavia. Was the book written before the
author even had the premonition that the war would begin? Or, did he write it up in a situation after the war? Mihajlo Kazic,
born 1960 in Serbia, studied engineering in the USA, and since gaining his doctorate has worked as the chef engineer in a
German construction company. Does he still have, like Simon Zvicer, a Serbian passport hidden in his closet? Probably not.
Is the irrational in this novel maybe somehow connected with the hardly understandable events in the Balkans, together with
the experience that the people, who until recently were peaceful, suddenly attacked each other, as if possessed by the devil?
In the novel, it seems as if the dim and distant past is living, as if people, naturally, still believe in evil spirits. Here
they are evoked time and time again, and the reader has to come to terms with the effect they have, at least in the world
of the novel. For those of you who, at the end of a crime thriller, want everything logically explained, it is advisable not
to read it. Namely, the author is convinced that the world is not arranged that way. "Uncertainty is an important part of
life" it is said at the end of the novel. "The fear of uncertainty caused many stories to be told incorrectly. With the story
of Simon Zvicer this is not the case".
