Mirisi, zlato i tamjan
A novel by Croatian writer Slobodan Novak, written in 1967 and published in 1968. It is one of the most highly regarded novels in Croatian literature in general. It is often cited as an example of existentialist literature. It is told through the monologu
The novel "Scents, Gold and Incense" is rich in meaning. It intertwines life and legend, myth and reality, atheism and hypertrophied religiosity. It is a book about disappointment in the world and people, about nausea and disgust, about a man who has lost the meaning of life, about lost illusions. The main character's borderline existential situation is marked by anxiety, precisely the Sartrean metaphor of disgust, approaching oneself and distancing oneself from oneself, a hopeless Godot-like waiting: Mali waits for "a life that could come when a death that does not come comes." For him, living means "constantly choosing the crueler alternative." This feverish dialogue with one's own conscience, full of disturbing moralism, is the pinnacle of Croatian existentialist prose.
Angeboten wird ein Exemplar
