THE NOVELS OF HAZIM AKMADZIC BETWEEN THE CLASSIC REALISM AND POSTMODERNISM

Abstract

The common stylistic, ideational, ideological and aesthetic characteristics of the three entitled novels comprising 1175 pages are included in the book review. For most part, the mentioned characteristics of the novels Gazi Husrevbey and Gazi Isa-bey are separately analysed. Considering the fact that my separate study about the novel Mimar was published in the journal Zivot (Life) in 2004, where an argument is presented about the structure of the trilogy constructed through the coalescence of classic realism and postmodernism, and especially through the ontology of absurdism. It confirms the excessive fabulation, Islamic ethics and psychology of characters, Bosnian-Turkish historical and spiritual unity. It argues about the Muslim/ religious feelings as the highest value, Islam as one’s way of thinking and one’s mission in life. It also looks at Islam as the origin of authority and something that regulates the (self ) conduct of the characters. It criticizes and considers the pretension of literary equating of God’s and man’s will in the domain of power and rule over people anachronic. It questions the idealization of Turkish colonialism, especially through the apotheosis of the main characters. It proves the literary well-foundedness of numerous events in all three novels in terms of its historical factualism. It also argues against the literary suggestion, historically unfounded, that the Turkish conquests are the fruit of God’s providence and as such fatefully inevitable. It argues against the literary suggestion of potential Bosniak mythomaniac reception, in other words the literary thesis of the Pataren-Bosniak-Turkish common ethnic genesis, origin and unity in the character of Husrev-bey. At the same time, it warns of a potential Bosniak political and religious manipulation of this literary thesis about the supposed common ancestry – the manipulation in terms of an unwanted (and historically unfounded) historical marginalization of the Christian Bosnians in the Bosniak eyalet. (Compare, in the book review, chapter II, 2 & 3). From the ideological aspect the novels are compared to some prose by Ivo Andric and from the aesthetic aspect with The Death and the Darvish or the Fortress by Mesa Selimovic. Aside from the mentioned idealization of Turkish colonialism, all three novels confirm the dignity of the Bosniak-Turkish Islamic brotherhood and exude Bosniak inveteracy, equanimity and self-confidence. As far as Bosniak literature is concerned all three novels are an aesthetic gain and also a literary rarity amidst discussion of Bosnia during the Ottoman period, and owing to the fact that the believers will strengthen their Islamic awareness and pride in the belonging to an Islamic civilization and culture.