• Publisher: Beletrina
• 340 pages
• Author: Goran Vojnović
• Original title: Đorđić se vrača

It’s August 2017 and the start of the European Basketball Championship when Marko Đorđić arrives, unannounced, in Fužine, the notorious suburb of Ljubljana where he grew up. For the first time since moving to Bosnia more than a decade ago, he returns indefinitely, maybe even forever. But he doesn’t really know what to do in Fužine. His father Radovan has stomach cancer and is waiting for surgery, his mother Ranka cares for his father and is becoming a nervous wreck herself, and his childhood friends, Adi, Aco and Dejan, are moving in circles to which Marko no longer belongs. Adi is drowning in drugs, Aco has totally dedicated himself to crime, and Dejan is lost in small-town life on the other side of Slovenia.

Nowadays, the only thing binding these old friends is their memories.

With each new day, with each new victory of the Slovenian national basketball team, it becomes clearer that Marko no longer has a place in Slovenia. A decade of living in Bosnia, marked by nationalism, war trauma and an unhappy first love, has turned a once confused teenager into an emotional wreck of a young man, whose turbulent inner world is a mir- ror image of the outside one.

About the author

Goran Vojnović

Author and director Goran Vojnović (1980) exploded onto the Slovenian literary scene in 2008 with his debut novel Southern Scum, Go Home! (Čefurji raus!). The novel became

an instant bestseller, reaped all the major national literary awards, including the Kresnik Award

and the Prešeren Fund Award, Slovenia’s highest award for artistic achievement, has been reprinted numerous times, made into a theatre play and a movie (the latter was directed by the author himself) and translated into nine languages. His second novel, Yugoslavia, My Fatherland (Jugoslavija, moja dežela, 2012), also received the Kresnik Award, was made into a theatre play

and translated into twenty languages. His third novel, The Fig Tree (Figa),

was published in 2016 and once 47

again received the Kresnik Award, was adapted into a stage play and translated into several languages. Vojnović is only the third person ever to receive three Kresnik Awards.

Đorđić Is Back (Đorđić se vrača, 2021) is his fourth novel.