Plot
The novel follows the Cincar family Njago (later Njegovan) through the centuries, in different epochs and among different cultures, from the fall of the ancient capital of the Cincar people Moscopole, through the Turkish siege of Vienna, the uprising Serbia, to post-war Belgrade under communist rule. The members of the Njago (Njegovan) family build their coexistence with Serbs, Turks, Albanians, Greeks, Germans and other peoples from Constantinople to Vienna, based on their resourcefulness, which is sometimes attributed to the Cincar mentality, and manage to overcome all turbulent historical moments and great events of their time in one way or another.
Criticism
Historian, writer and academician Dr Predrag Palavestra wrote: "The Golden Fleece marks an entire historical epoch and stands at the very top of literature written in Serbian in the second half of the 20th century. (...) The novel is realized as a cycle of seven large independent parts, which are internally connected by the family fate of the Balkan Cincars, mixed with Serbian population and Serbian bourgeois class in its rise and disintegration."
Writer Dragan Velikić writes in the preface to the first volume of The Golden Fleece in Laguna's edition from 2012: "Pekić is a recorder of the buzzing of history that is refracted in his erudite imagination. That powerful chord of comprehensiveness of the world roars and lasts from the first to the last page of The Golden Fleece. They parade before the reader characters of Njegovan - but also ghosts that inhabited these characters during their lives; centaurs and vampires, utopians and assassins, historical figures - from Suleiman the Magnificent to Ilija Garašanin, pages are written about Belgrade from mythical times ... (...) Pekić created humor that has no equal in Serbian literature. Some characters from the Njegovan family seem to have come out of Alan Ford comics."
Critic Gojko Božović sees Pekić's The Pilgrimage of Arsenije Njegovan (as a prehistoric saga about Njegovans and The Golden Fleece) and Slobodan Selenić's novel Očevima i ocima (Fathers and Forefathers), as a novel: "civil only conditionally, as great literary testimonies about how yesterday's world disappeared, and not about how yesterday's world existed and in what forms it was expressed."
PDF Download
If you are interested in reading Zlatno runo by Borislav Pekić, you can download the PDF version of the first volume here . However, we recommend that you buy a printed copy from Delfi bookstores or other online retailers, as this will support the author's estate and Serbian literature.
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