Small world

The three Croatian crime writers whose names I have recently discovered (Goran Tribuson, Pavao Pavlicic and Jurica Pavicic) have done much writing of other kinds: science fiction, journalism, film criticism and, if I remember correctly, non-crime novels. I guessed that this was one by-product of their membership in a small group. Since they write in a language not widely read, perhaps these men have to be versatile if they want to make a living writing.

Then I received another charming piece of evidence that Croatian writers are part of a tightly knit community. The owner of the Internet parlor that I made the Dalmatian Coast headquarters of Detectives Beyond Borders not only was acquainted with Pavicic's work, he knew Pavicic himself. God forbid I should spend more than, say, forty-five minutes a day blogging while on vacation, but that place left me with a good feeling about Split. The owner and staff played good music -- Jimi Hendrix, just enough Grateful Dead to avoid making me sick, and, best of all, Brazil's Caetano Veloso.

I asked the owner if Veloso had ever played in Split. No, he said, "This is the end of the world."

I hope he gets the opportunity to see Veloso one day and also to achieve his real dream: to see Neil Young. For now, though, Split is just fine as the smallish, lively, gorgeously situated, historically rich city that it is.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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Goran Tribuson
Pavao Pavličić
Jurica Pavičić

Please disregard the previous post

It turns out that at least one Croatian author has written crime novels that take advantage of the country's recent political changes in ways that make me wish his work were available in English. Goran Tribuson's novels about the private investigator Nikola Banic give "a historical panorama of the Croatian society, from the beginning of the fall of socialism to the ups and downs of the transitional period. Tribuson has not only given literary legitimacy to the crime genre in Croatian literature, he also bases novels of this genre on the everyday reality of the local community."

Banic, a "Croatian version of Phil Marlowe, is a slightly unconventional detective type because he is a jazz fan, a beer drinker, a dedicated smoker and a man burdened with many family problems." Because of this, according to the article from which this information is taken, "he has become very popular among the readers."

On the one hand, this may seem an overly familiar description. On the other, interesting things can happen when sensitive authors adapt the traditional American hard-boiled form to the situations of their own countries. Perhaps Tribuson is similar to Yasmina Khadra in this respect. If so, he's well worth reading.

In one respect, both Goran Tribuson and Pavao Pavlicic, another Croatian writer, are similar to to such American crime writers as Frederic Brown, Donald Westlake and the early Elmore Leonard, in that all have written in more than one popular genre. Leonard wrote westerns; the others have all written science fiction in addition to their crime stories.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007
Technorati tags:
Goran Tribuson
Pavao Pavličić