As part of the project “Tales of Belgrade”, on Wednesday, January 25th at 7pm at the Nebojša Tower, Mirjana Đurđević was talking about her book “Kaja, Belgrade and a Good American”, together with Anđelka Cvijić.

Mirjana Đurđević is not a typical writer. Her prose does not follow a pattern of a detective story, although she plays with the genre. Her novels neither are not typical female writing nor are her heroines similar to female characters in Serbian prose. “Kaja, Belgrade and a Good American” is not a classical history novel, although talks about the period between 1927 and 1945, following a short history of a co-life of Belgraders and Calmits, a Buddhist community that moved to this part of the world running first from the October Revolution and then again from the Nazis. The community disappeared without leaving a trace, not even in memories of Belgraders who showed no recollection of them. The heroine Mica Đurđević, a curious and emancipated writer, is an alter ego of the author. She stands out as an atypical person who wants to help Kaja, a Calmit girl of a very unique personality.

Mirjana Đurđević, in her own humorous way, is provoking contemporary readers to re-examine their own attitudes and habits of perceiving things in a simplified way, based on stereotypes and prejudice. Following that idea, „story of Belgrade where you have missed to live in“, a subtitle of the novel, is also a story of Belgrade that does not differ much from the earlier one, at least in main characteristics that the novel is focusing on.