In gripping true-confession style, the narrator speaks of love, of family history, of the fragile little things that make us what we are. A woman in the prime of her life, her world coming apart at the seams... Think you already know this story? Think again. It's a brand-new tale in the skilful hands of Vida Ognjenović, whose well-known talents for the theatre are on full display in this award-winning venture into fiction. Join her leading lady, Amalija, on a soul-searching quest for true identity. If there really is such a thing...
"With its eye-catching and ambiguous title, this book shows us that adultery is in fact the perfect metaphor for identity. When you come to think of it, identity is always a metaphor, never a fact. Identity is a construction imbued with our convictions and judgments...
The reader is drawn into a relationship with the narrator not unlike an adulterous affair, in which the truth is revealed bit by bit, layer after deceptive layer. We are promised a story about adultery, and what we get is a story about identity; there is no other way because the controversy of adultery is first and foremost the controversy of identity itself."
Sreten Ugričić
Vida Ognjenović (born 1941 in Dubočke near Nikšić, Montenegro) is a highly esteemed Serbian theatre director, playwright, novelist, short story writer, university professor and diplomat. Her works include the short story collections The Poisonous Dandelion Milk (1994), The Grandfather Clock (1996), The Right Address (2007); the novels A House of Dead Scents (1995), The Adulterers (2006); and a number of plays, such as My Name is Mitar (1984), How to Make the Ruler Laugh (1988), Kanjoš Macedonović (1993), The Girl with Blue-Black Hair (1994), Mileva Einstein (1999), Yegor's Way (2000), Don Krsto (2007).
For her literary work she has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Andrić Award (1995), the Branko Ćopić Award (1996), the Karol Szirmay Short Story Award (1996), the Laza Kostić Award for Best Novel (1996), the Paja Marković Adamov Fiction Award (1997), the Ramonda Serbica Award (1998), the Stefan Mitrov Ljubiša Award (1999), and The National Library Award (2007). Her plays and fiction have been translated into English, German, Hungarian, Czech, Polish, Bulgarian and Macedonian.
She is the ambassador of Serbia to Denmark, having previously served as ambassador to Norway. She is also the president of the Serbian PEN Centre.
