The age of brass (1st Edition)

The age of brass (1st Edition)

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TIM press published a new book by Slobodan Šnajder The age of brass.

The age of brass is the story of two people who have lived their lives in a time of extremes, and of their descendant who, as not very happy inheritance, had to cope with this fact. Georg and Vera, as they are called in this novel, had, in fact, to a certain point in their lives extremely contrasting biographies. They meet as soon as it was possible without danger, after absolutely everything in the world was against this meeting. Then go different ways, when everything was indicating that they should stay together.
The story is European because it occurred in many versions, bearing witness to the power of ideology which can divide a table and a bed, yesterday and today, also in this century that is not any less marked by extremes. Because of various regards, however, and fear, this story was rarely told to the end.
The age of brass is also an epic river with many tributaries, backwaters, driftwood, that has difficulty getting through its estuary. Some may know that the river Bosut is unusual because sometimes it floats to its source.
In this novel the sources are to be looked for in a mythical time when the Pied Piper of Hamelin walked the German lands and collected the youth to take it in - Transylvania. Something closer to our time, in the year 1770, a group of German settlers came in Wolkowar during Theresian reforms, and remained in Slavonia. Later they would be called Volksdeutscher. The narration about them gives a broader framework of two individual fates, until the expulsion of "ethnic Germans" in 1945 from Silesia, Sudetenland and Yugoslavia and the disintegration of the latter.
The central part of the novel takes place in Poland, probably the most terrible scene of the Second World War. End of the novel belongs to places where the calm and the restless, for which we say that they're dead, go.

Slobodan Šnajder (Zagreb, 1948) graduated Philosophy and English at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. He was co-founder and long-time editor of the theater journal Prolog. He is active in a variety of genres. He published fiction since 1966. Since 1969 he has worked as a playwright, writing dramatic works continuously, which cannot be said for their performance. He is translated and played abroad.


  • ISBN: 978-953-8075-11-7
  • Dimensions: 155x240 mm
  • Number of pages: 372
  • Cover: hardback
  • Year of the edition: 2015
Večernji list (Denis Derk), November 14, 2015
Jutarnji list (Jagna Pogačnik), December 2, 2015
Jutarnji list (Miljenko Jergović), Dec 5, 2015
www.politika.rs (Vesna Roganović), Dec 13, 2015
Večernji list (Denis Derk), Nov 9, 2015
Politika (Mića Vujičić), Dec 26, 2015
Večernji list, December 24, 2015
https://civilka.wordpress.com (Davor Špišić), Jan 4, 2016
Dnevni list Danas (Marija Krtinić), Jan 14, 2016
Jutarnji list (Miljenko Jergović), Jan 24, 2016
www.blic.rs (Tatjana Nježić), Jan 24, 2016
Vreme (Teofil Pančić), Feb 4, 2016
prigorski.hr, Feb 12, 2016
Novi list (Sandra Sabovljev), Feb 14, 2016
Glas Slavonije, Feb 15, 2016
Novi list (Kim Cuculić), Feb 19, 2016
Pobjeda (Vlatko Simunović), Mar 20, 2016
Pobjeda, Mar 26, 2016.
NIN(Dragan Velikić), May 5th, 2016
Booksa.hr (Neven Svilar), May 6th, 2016
Polja (Srđan Srdić), No. 498, March/April 2016.
Moderna vremena (Dragan Jurak), May 19th, 2016
Novi magazin (Nadežda Gaće), May 26th 2016
Novi list (Jaroslav Pecnik), May 29th, 2016
Novi list, Jutarnji list, Večernji list, Sept 5th, 2016
Dnevni avaz (Mia Hebib), Sept 7th, 2016
Dnevni list (Vesna Hlavaček), Sept 12th, 2016
Al Jazeera (Jasmin Agić), Sept 11th, 2016
faktor.ba (Iman Redžović), Sept 16th, 2016
Večenji list (Denis Derk), Oct 5th, 2016
Jutarnji list, Oct 21st, 2016
Nacional (Kristina Olujić), Oct 31st, 2016
Politika (Ana Otašević), Jun 17th, 2017
www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de (Martin Sander, Ksenija Cvetković-Sander), Jul 21, 2017
Spiegelungen. Zeitschrift für deutsche Kultur und Geschichte Südosteuropas, No. 2.18 (Marijan Bobinac)

By writing a great novel, certainly one of the best in recent history of Croatian literature, the author tried to get rid of layers of heavy and burdensome heritage, but with this experience he also enriched us with new insights that may not be to one's taste. However, if we put the effort and read it, it can (perhaps) make us a better person.

Jaroslav Pecnik, Novi list


His novel emerges from the legend and from the legendary past, repeatedly interpreted and superinterpreted family stories just to be quickly transformed into a real, hard and cruel truth of the twentieth century. (...)
This is, without doubt, the most important novel of Croatian literature in the last few years.
Miljenko Jergović, Jutarnji list

The Age of brass is a strong book that requires a concentrated reader, ready to pause and think over the narrative sentences that are actually philosophical thoughts, author's sentiments, it requires a sensitive reader that will recognize the poetic moments and that will agree to the absence of simple and one-way interpretation. In short, The Age of Brass is a serious, solid and very sensitive book. (...)
For readers who, willingly or unwillingly, know the 20th century as a period of extremes, Šnajder's The Age of Brass is in fact a brass age as well as an age even more durable than brass. It is a literary testimony to the possibility of writing after Auschwitz, a writing that is difficult and uncertain, but inevitably intimate and personal without exception.
Andrea Zlatar Violić, Booksa.hr

The Age of Brass, the age of the snake that Moses made by the order of God, is the age of the absence of God; it is the age of an idea in which one is forced to believe and the time of brass idol worshiping. And in this age the worst atrocities take place. (...)
It took "a lifetime" for Šnajder to make "The Age of Brass". Not because of the sensibility of the subject of the German immigrants, for it is no longer the issue. But because "The Age of Brass" is what one calls the author's will, a testamentary novel.
Dragan Jurak, Moderna vremena