Goli Otok - Goli Otok in Literature

Goli Otok in Literature

The first Yugoslav novel which raised the subject of purges against Stalinists in 1950s Yugoslavia was Kad su cvetale tikve (When Pumpkins Blossomed, 1968) by Dragoslav Mihailović. It is set in Belgrade and tells the demise of a boxer, Ljubomir Sretenović, who eventually flees Serbia for a new life in Sweden. His brother and father both vanish at the hands of the UDBA, and his brother spends time on Goli Otok (although the island itself is never mentioned).

The first book describing the conditions of the prison, was the autobiographic novel Umiranje na obroke (Dying in Installments) written by the Slovenian author Igor Torkar and published in 1984 by the alternative publishing house Globus in Zagreb with the help of the Communist revolutionary poet Matej Bor. The same year, the book Goli Otok: The Island of Death, written by Venko Markovski, was published in the United States. Ligio Zanini (1927–1993), a poet born in Rovinj, wrote Martin Muma (1990), an autobiographical book about his imprisonment on the island. In 1991, the Slovene inmate Radovan Hrast published an autobiographical novel entitled Čas, ki ga ni (The Time That Is Not), based on his experience in the concentration camp.

Other significant literary reference to Goli Otok include Noč do jutra (Night till Morning, 1981), by the Slovenian writer Branko Hofman, Goli Otok: Italiani nel Gulag di Tito (Goli Otok: Italians in Tito's Gulag), by Giacomo Scotti, an Italian emigrant in Croatia, and Brioni, by the Slovenian writer Drago Jančar. Rade Panic wrote novel Tito's Hawaii. Also Prigionieri del silenzio by Giampaolo Pansa (2004) Island of the World, a 2007 novel by Michael D. O'Brien, chronicles the life of fictional character Josip Lasta, who endures and ultimately escapes imprisonment on the island.