Catherine’s trajectory in life\u00a0is accompanied by failures in love, family traumas and an incredible romance with the handsome Sini\u0161a. The novel takes us through turbulent times in the Balkan region, from the eighties to the present day, portraying growing up in the twilight of Tito’s Yugoslavia, and giving intimate insights into all\u00a0that happened to the region after that.<\/strong><\/p>\n Carefully crafted characters and masterful, dynamic storytelling place\u00a0Catherine the Great and the Small\u00a0<\/em>in\u00a0the company of the very best novels, which speak about the reality of their geographic setting\u00a0and are remembered for their convincing, strong, maladjusted characters.\u00a0Catherine is certainly one of them: a\u00a0\u00a0powerful female voice seeking her place within her family, among friends, in the cities she lives in, and constructing her unique identity as a daughter, granddaughter,\u00a0\u00a0friend,\u00a0\u00a0mistress,\u00a0\u00a0wife\u00a0and mother.<\/strong><\/p>\n “…a delightful thing: part social commentary, part matriarchal epic, part comedy, and part tragedy \u2014 not necessarily equally weighted. Stunning, humorous, tragic, but always true, the novel features three generations of characters, most of them female, all from small-town Europe. But the author\u2019s real triumph is what she leaves out . . .The novel is ultimately not about war; it\u2019s about human fragility, peace, growth, life, death, and everything else in the narrator Catherine\u2019s life.<\/em>”<\/p>\n Grany Knows Best –\u00a0LA Review of Books<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n “The splendid language of this novel is skilfully and vividly translated, and the narrative is compelling. What is also striking is the portrayal of the characters with all their flaws and foibles (and who gain our sympathy perhaps particularly because of them). This inclusiveness of vision towards both characters and places \u2013 without judgement, rejecting nothing \u2013 is a special quality. It is the viewpoint of our greatest organ of perception, the heart, a territory that Olja Kne\u017eevi\u0107 knows well and has made her own.”<\/em><\/p>\n Morelle Smith,\u00a0Scottish Review<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n “Catherine the Great and the Small, Olja Kne\u017eevi\u0107\u2019s fourth book and first to be translated into English, is a clinic in the art of contradiction. As its title suggests, it is a novel concerned with resisting the rigid binaries of selfhood, one which reaches for nuance, plurality, \u201ca feeling of and\u201d, as American author Maggie Nelson would assert. As Katarina, the narrator, traces her childhood from 1970s Yugoslavia to modern day Britain, we witness a life struggling to resist definition, to remain elusive, to find a certain private clarity in the confusion of exile and grief.”<\/em><\/p>\n Matt Janney,\u00a0The Calvert Journal<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n “This is not a\u00a0they lived happily ever after\u00a0novel, not least because\u00a0they lived happily ever after\u00a0all too often does not happen in the real world. Catherine struggles, she falls, she fails, she picks herself up, she carries on, for herself and those she loves, and, somehow, she does not get the perfect situation but makes an accommodation with those around her, keeps her head help up high and marches on. We can only wish her well.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The Modern Novel<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n “In\u00a0Catherine the Great and the Small, Montenegrin author Olja Kne\u017eevi\u0107 has created a contemporary Slavic fairytale set in the Balkans and spanning the final decades of the twentieth century. . .\u00a0Kne\u017eevi\u0107\u2019s relentless chronicling of the ravages of heterosexuality and women\u2019s centering of men invites us to read the novel as a quiet act of queer subversion in a hostile Eastern European climate.”<\/em><\/p>\n
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