Globetrotter

The place is Serbia, the time is the late 1990s. Our protagonist, a single man, writes a regular op-ed column for a Belgrade newspaper and spends the rest of his time with his best friend, smoking pot and talking about sex, politics, and life in general. One day on the shore of the Danube he spots a man slapping a beautiful woman. Intrigued, he follows the woman into the tangled streets of the city until he loses sight of her. A few days later he receives a mysterious manuscript whose contents seem to mutate each time he opens it. To decipher the manuscript — a collection of fragments on the Kabbalah and the history of the Jews of Zemun and Belgrade — he contacts an old schoolmate, now an eccentric mathematician, and a group of men from the Jewish community.

As the narrator delves deeper into arcane topics, he begins to see signs of anti-Semitism, past and present, throughout the city and he feels impelled to denounce it. But his increasingly passionate columns erupt in a scandal culminating in murder. Following in the footsteps of is a cerebral adventure into the underground worlds of secret societies and conspiracy theories.

Believing they were being taken to a better camp, Belgrade's Jews would climb into the truck with a sense of relief. Mainly women, children and the elderly, they expected a long and uncomfortable trip but, after crossing the border, their journey would come to an abrupt end. Here the drivers would get out and attach a hose from the exhaust to the back of the truck-Over the course of a few months in 1942 the Nazis systematically exterminated the majority of Serbia's Jews using carbon monoxide and specially designed trucks. The only information the narrator of this bleakly comic novel can find about the summer when his relatives disappeared is the names of the truck drivers: Götz and Meyer. During his research he becomes fascinated by the unknowable characters and daily lives of these men. But his imagination proves a dangerous force, and his obsession with the past threatens to overwhelm him.

Сергей Довлатов – один из наиболее популярных и читаемых русских писателей конца XX – начала XXI века. Его повести, рассказы и записные книжки переведены на множество языков, экранизированы, изучаются в школе и вузах. «Заповедник», «Зона», «Иностранка», «Наши», «Чемодан» – эти и другие удивительно смешные и пронзительно печальные довлатовские вещи давно стали классикой. «Отморозил пальцы ног и уши головы», «выпил накануне – ощущение, как будто проглотил заячью шапку с ушами», «алкоголизм излечим – пьянство – нет» – шутки Довлатова запоминаешь сразу и на всю жизнь, а книги перечитываешь десятки раз. Они никогда не надоедают.

В антологию вошли произведения самых значимых в Сербии мастеров «малой прозы». Опираясь на богатую и ко многому обязывающую национальную традицию, писатели создают огромный «параллельный» мир, прозаический универсум, отражающий все существующие перспективы и всё разнообразие идеологий конца XX и первых полутора десятилетий XXI века.

Главный герой – бывший ликвидатор (сотрудник спецслужб) попадает во временную петлю и встречается с подобными себе, «застрявшими» во времени, где с ними происходят невероятные события, которые изменяют характер, психику и мировоззрение главного героя…