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“The Socialist Abyss” by Gabriella Chmet presented in Trieste
Five years after the novel La guerra di Giusto, my new narrative/memoir L'abisso socialista. Memorie di una ex Yugoslava is published by Luglio Editore in Trieste. The most difficult book, the most painful, the story of a life that defines an entire existence. No, I'm not exaggerating, I'm aware of having touched the most delicate chords, of having put my finger in a wound that has never completely healed. The story that spans the second half of the twentieth century and ends in the present day, is the story of Tito's Yugoslavia, of his parable as god-master of a nation built with iron and fire on a purely ideological basis....
Dreaming of freedom
Gabriella Chmet recovers her memories as a teenager growing up in Tito's Yugoslavia, painting a merciless and ironic fresco of a nation that no longer exists and of its god-master. It was certainly not the (alleged) lack of flavors among the yogurt jars, as former Croatian president Kolinda Grabar Kitarović once declared, that made life in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia insipid and bitter. The relatives of the thousands of people who disappeared into thin air, the hundreds of thousands of Julian-Dalmatian exiles forced to leave everything to save themselves, the many political persecuted (and interned), or how many escaped... know something about it.
