Alternative Narratives in Serbian Women's Fiction: Sympathy for the Devil in Mirjana Novaković's "Fear and Servant" Cover Image

Alternative Narratives in Serbian Women's Fiction: Sympathy for the Devil in Mirjana Novaković's "Fear and Servant"
Alternative Narratives in Serbian Women's Fiction: Sympathy for the Devil in Mirjana Novaković's "Fear and Servant"

Author(s): Vladislava Gordić Petković
Subject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: Editura U. T. Press
Keywords: Serbian novel; postmodernism; fiction; narrative; supernatural

Summary/Abstract: The paper discusses types of narrative in Mirjana Novaković's novel Fear and Servant (2000). Dealing with the Serbia of the 18th century, the novel describes the hunt for vampires from the point of view of two narrators: a Habsburg princess and the Devil himself, disguised as Otto von Hausburg. Loosely based upon historical facts and the pattern of quest, the novel offers two testimonies of an adventure filled with fantasy and horror, yet driven by the forces of history, politics, and ideology. The two protagonists whose narratives are alternating within the novel are either unable or unwilling to stop the vicious plots of sinister clergy and nobility, due to the fact that the hidden narrator, the mastermind of the plot, emerges behind their confronted tales of the uncanny.

  • Issue Year: XIX/2010
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 161-168
  • Page Count: 8
  • Language: English