Johann's 501

The novel is set in what ought to be present-day Belgrade and Serbia around the turn of the millennium, and almost everything is familiar: the streets, the trams, the newspapers at the kiosks. Yet through cracks in the text come strange details. There is no New Belgrade across the Sava, only sand, the city has no recent history and no politics, chocolate is an illegal substance bought from dealers, foreigners may not enter Japan, and Sartre died in a war. For the people who live there, this world is painfully real, so real that it must be replaced as soon as possible by a new and better one free of all suffering, and that utopia has to be worked for, sparing no one.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

524 pages in the original

Genres

Speculative, Politics (assigned by AI)

Set in

Serbia, around 2000

First published

2005 by Narodna knjiga – Alfa

Author's age

39 when first published

ISBN

9788633122627 (original)