Overview

There is nothing easy about being the Minister of Culture of Montenegro—but the next nine days for Valentin Kovacevic will be especially difficult. During an artist’s performance, he has accidentally killed her, and now, if he hopes to preserve both his position and his sanity, he must navigate the murky corridors of government bureaucracy, cultural expectations, and relentless family pressures. The Minister, winner of the 2020 European Union Prize for Literature, is a darkly satirical political noir that exposes the harsh realities behind democratic “transitions.” It reveals how the promises of reform can empower corrupt politicians and criminal networks, fuel nationalism, and wipe out the middle class. Sharp, unsettling, and bitingly relevant, it is a portrait of a society where truth is slippery, power is dangerous, and survival demands moral compromise.

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9789533515908

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Stefan Bošković was born in 1983 in Podgorica, Montenegro. His works include the short story collection Transparentne životinje (Transparent Animals, 2018) and the novel Šamaranje (Slap in the Face, 2014), which won the 2014 award for the best manuscript novel in Montenegro. In 2016, he received second prize at the Festival of European Short Stories for “Fashion and Friends.” Bošković has also written scripts for a feature film, several short films, a sitcom series, and numerous documentaries. Will Firth was born in 1965 in Newcastle, Australia, and studied German and Slavic languages in Canberra, Zagreb, and Moscow. He has lived in Berlin, Germany, since 1991, working as a translator of literature and the humanities from Russian, Macedonian, and all variants of Serbo-Croatian. His major recent translations include Andrej Nikolaidis’s Till Kingdom Come, Faruk Šehić’s Quiet Flows the Una, Miroslav Krleža’s Journey to Russia, and Miloš Crnjanski’s A Novel of London.

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