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A remake of Albahari's novel Darkness was recently promoted in Belgrade. The novel is a political thriller whose plot takes place in 1990s Serbia and whose protagonists are artists, writers and others who collaborated with the various secret services of the regime.
- Though this is actually the second edition of your novel, you expressed joy during its recent promotion, as if it were a new book…
- The novel Darkness, to my great delight, has reappeared after ten years. It is certainly one of my favourite books among those that I've written. Considering that the novel remained somewhat "hidden" from readers, I hope this is an opportunity for readers to discover whether they agree with my opinion.
- The novel speaks about a situation that has not been resolved appropriately to this day. It addresses the roles that some writers and artists played in the decades preceding the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. It has to do, therefore, with the modes of collaborations between some artists and various state security services. At one time I wrote this novel because I surmised that for both our culture and society it was most crucial to know who collaborated with the authorities and in what way. Some countries of the former Eastern block released such material without delay, but here, to my knowledge, materials about such collaboration are still unobtainable for the public.
- As a writer you have demonstrated substantial courage. Did it perhaps cross your mind that some of the heroes of your novel may recognise themselves?
- While I was writing this novel, I had nobody particular in mind because, after all, I have no insight into any specific writer's collaboration with the regime. My intention was to perhaps provoke a certain discussion about all this, but it seems I did it too gently and the flame I thought would start raging turned into a flicker that quickly died out. Thus my Darkness disappeared into total darkness.
- You expressed your standpoint in your novel but what do you think about writers who take on socially involved roles, about authors in the service of politics, about the engagement of art in general?
- My answer may sound a bit paradoxical, but I actually don't believe in the engagement of writers. Writers, not only in our country but throughout the 20th century, frequently played ugly, negative and unacceptable roles, so I fully understand that many are not ready to believe in what writers say. I am not certain that our writers in today's situation can offer any solutions because writers, like the majority of people, when choosing between political passion and political wisdom, they choose passion.
- You have a whole decade of life behind you in Canada. How would you portray your new life in such a completely new environment?
- Regardless of whether you have directly experienced North-American culture, starting a new life on this continent also marks the beginning of a singular cultural shock. Nearly everything is different from what one is used to: from the structure of the working day to the weekend dedicated to a hysterical ritual of spending. In cinemas, as is well known, everyone eats; actually people consume enormous quantities of popcorn, fast food and non-alcoholic beverages. People eat everywhere, or at least drink, including at universities, theatres, shops, but on the other hand, no one smokes anywhere. Students sit with their feet on desks and don't cover their mouths when yawning. There are a countless number of similar differences, but over time one begins to adapt, one stops noticing what is objectionable and seeks out that which is agreeable. One aspect I find agreeable is multiculturalism, that wonderful mixture of the most diverse cultures which, through blending cultural, folklore, culinary and traditional elements, actually represent an introduction into a new, future culture that will – I like to think – one day become the new common culture for all of mankind.
- I think that the experience of emigration is something that nobody can fully accept because one simply cannot erase one's former life. In my case, I don't want to erase it. There are people who, for various reasons, whether historical or personal, want to erase that which preceded their emigration. For me, however, only a part of life is occurring in some other place. For me, this exile, which is not political but voluntary, is an experience from which I continuously learn something new. For me as a writer it is an interesting experience because it has provided me with a series of themes that I had not addressed in my novels and stories before my arrival to Canada. And even today, after ten years, what impresses me is the experience of people around me, the experience of newcomers that inspires me and finds its way into my stories.
- You live the destiny of a writer who works outside his own language, which is not easy in the least. You live over there, you create your work over there, yet as a writer, you belong here. How have you reconciled this?
- As time passes, I actually feel less absent from here. The longer I am over there, in a strange way, the more I am here. Perhaps that is because I don't exist as a writer over there and the world of writing is basically my world.
- In what measure is David Albahari a Serbian writer, and in what measure a Canadian writer?
- When one lives in two different places, then one must accept being presented as someone who comes from two different places. However, I stress that a writer always has his home, which is the writer's language. I am therefore a writer in the Serbian language, a writer who writes in our language within our literature. As things have turned out, my life has been separated into two not quite equal parts, but that genuine place from which I come is our language.
- How present are you in the literary life of Canada?
- I live in Calgary, which is endlessly far from the biggest cultural centres in Canada, namely Toronto or Montreal. When I say endlessly, I mean a distance of several thousands kilometres. However, if we were to judge from the perspective of a European idea of cities, Calgary would belong to something called a province. I don't say this with regret, I only state a fact. In other words, life in such a city, far away from everything, at least as a writer, is much more suitable because this sort of releases me from the obligation of being more present in literary life. I am present in the literary life of Calgary, but it is modest compared to the events in, let's say, the literary life of Toronto or Belgrade. However, this suits me and leaves me plenty of free time. It is because of this that I can show up every year with a new book at the Book Fair.
- The theme of your book of stories Shadows deals with the life of emigrants in Canada. Is it possible to say that they are people-shadows, considering your own selection of the title?
- There are several reasons for that. The first is that there is a story entitled Shadows, and when I was choosing a title for the book, the title of this story somehow imposed itself. It is one of the stories in the book coloured by a light political hue, and therefore it has a political context which, as you know, rarely appears in my prose. This title, in a way, defines the majority of characters in my book. The majority of stories deals with the theme of clashes and misunderstandings among family members or among newcomers in Canada. And I thought that the title Shadows denotes a form of existence in which these people live. After these clashes among family members (I refer to my stories), people lose their fullness and turn into shadows, as do people who have just arrived to new surroundings. They are also shadows in a way, because they don't bring their complete, full personality with them, because a part of them inevitably remains over there, from where they came. They arrive like a shadow and attempt to fill that shadow. The choice of book cover fits very well with the content; Munch's "Dance of Life", because people in his paintings and graphics are depicted in some interstate between fullness and shadowy form.
- The novel Bait was very successfully staged. Will some of your other work be staged soon?
- For the time being, there is no concrete plan for adapting my texts for the stage, but now that you have mentioned it, I would like someone to show interest in my novel Getz and Mayer because I think that the story narrated in this novel, about the sufferings that Belgrade's Jews experienced at the hands of the Germans, is a story that can be rendered into a tragic movie.
- Your latest books and interviews bear witness that David Albahari has actually never left Zemun. How true is this?
- You have already said something that may well be a kind of answer. I actually haven't left Zemun, so whenever I'm back, I go out into the street as if I've overslept in my old apartment. Some time has passed and then I go out into the street. Naturally, there is something I don't like, but then I close my eyes. It's enough to go to the Zemun Quay or to pass through Zemun Park, and slowly everything becomes as it should be.
- The life story of your hero – the settings (Zemun where you lived) and the hero's departure-- resembles your life to a large degree…
- The book Leaches is not as autobiographic as, let's say, the novels Bait or Snow Man. Having been outside of the country in recent years, like my heroes I have become an observer in a way, or it could be said we are narrators from aside, because what the hero of the book narrates is what happened to someone else. He took part in it, but he narrates events several years later. Why several years later? Because what happened in 1998, and several years later, still exists. Therefore, several years later he relates his story didactically. He begins by speaking about his case in the hope that it conveys something to someone, but ends with the conclusion that what he has attempted to say is of no effect. It is, in fact, another confirmation that all my books speak about defeat, that all my heroes address the feeling of defeat.
- Does that mean that the attempt to express your feeling of the world through literature is nothing but writing in sand?
- My hero, somewhere in the novel, does mention the Book of Sand, one of Borges' story. This is actually sort of writing in sand. Unfortunately, many similar situations in human lives are such that you wonder why human society and why human lives are made this way, and you wonder why certain experiences are actually for nothing and that this book conveys nothing to other generations and other people.
- The whole environment of your main character exudes a kind of paranoia. To what extent is paranoia, which obviously marks our reality, healthy and where does it go beyond bounds?
- You know, Thomas Pynchon, an American writer whom few have seen, said that if someone thinks that it is perhaps horrible for someone to think that everything is interlinked, it is even more horrible to think that nothing is interlinked. And we actually live in a form that we could conditionally call a paranoid form, because we believe that things are linked and that certain events lead to other events, and that therefore there's a certain connection among things. Therefore, to believe in a kind of conspiracy is natural to the human mind. Paranoia somewhere becomes a haven for the human spirit. I don't know if professionals would accept that, but I would call it a healthy paranoia. What the hero of this book relates, what he talks about with other characters, is not a story about paranoia per se, but about theories of conspiracy, about conspiracies. Whether a conspiracy exists, whether something has happened because someone somewhere has devised it, whether there is some imaginary centre of power that causes things to become connected… these themes haunt the hero of this book, and naturally he can not get an answer to such questions. If he could, then writers would know more than others. I think that the majority of writers, me included, can ask questions but not deliver answers.
- Can it be said that one of the primary planes of this novel of yours is the theological plane?
- The hero of my book is involved in a group that attempts to induce social changes that would get rid of certain societal dangers using secret kabbalistic doctrines. Considering that kabbalah is a system of Jewish mysticism, of one orthodox religion that also represents one religious concept of the world, then it is only natural that questions of that kind find a place in my book. I am not an authority on theological issues so to speak, and my heroes talk about this only to the degree they need to understand it, or at least try to understand it, because I have the impression that nobody understands anything but only tries to understand, and therefore they try to understand what they can. Mysticism is present in all religions as an attempt to come closer to God than is possible through what may be considered regular religion. Therefore my idea wasn't to place religion on a kind of primary plane on which the most important issues of human existence are solved, though I have nothing against someone reading my book and viewing it as a primary plane that can help us understand and comprehend ourselves in our surrounding.
- Between nothingness and pain, your hero chooses pain. Is that our only choice?
- I pulled that quote from Faulkner's novel as a question of choice in life, whether to exit life itself or to choose pain because, as far as one is happy, one carries a certain measure of pain inside - if nothing else, then at least the pain that comes from knowing that "the end" is inevitable. My hero follows Faulkner's hero in not accepting nothingness; he refuses to deprive himself of life because he accepts duration and – pain! Instead of scarifying himself, he sacrifices his manuscript and remains with pain.
- By facing the life of your hero, you slowly face nihilism…
- I don't see the hero of my book as a nihilist. It depends how we define nihilism. I think he's someone who perhaps desperately attempts to understand one seemingly simple mechanism, the mechanism of prejudice functioning in all of us at a higher or lower level. This finally makes him escape from everything he has been trying to understand because there is no way to really understand or prevent the functioning of that mechanism. I, therefore, wouldn't call my hero a nihilist, even less so myself.
- You are considered one of the most translated Serbian writers today. What's your view of this?
- For every writer, it is undoubtedly a fine moment to see what functions in another language, actually what arouses certain emotions in readers who belong to other cultures and traditions. In a way, it is perhaps a double-edged sword because it induces a writer to think about topics that may have meaning to those who don't read him in his language. What I would like to say is that in such a situation, a writer begins to search for stories that may not be that close to him, because in trying to write in one language he speaks in many languages.
- Speaking of translations, do you have any news from that front?
- Of all my books, the book that has had the longest shelf life with foreign readers has been the novel Bait. The novel appeared this year in three languages, including Polish and Slovenian. The novel Leaches was published last year in Germany and next year it will be published in France and America.
- What are you currently writing?
-Currently I am working on a new short novel entitled Brother, a short story about a lost and then found brother, about jealousy and misunderstanding. The novel will appear for the Book Fair. For me, it is a continuation, playing with quotes from great philosophers, actually a continuation of playing with that which I began in the novel Ludwig. In that novel, my hero refers to Wittgenstein, and in the novel Brother the narrator seeks consolation in some of Aristotle's quotes.
- Let's return to your novel Darkness. You said somewhere that "the darkness we have made for ourselves is the darkness from which every society and culture should run away" and also that "the prerequisite to come to light is to clear things up with those who create darkness around us". How would you explain this more precisely?
- As a boy, I read a book called Be Good Till Death. I have always wondered how man would recognise such a moment and then I understood that one should be good not thinking about the moment when everything ends. Goodness is a prerequisite for darkness to begin disappearing. | 
