“About Death itself he knew everything: it would be difficult to find someone who could outdo him in his knowledge of its causes and effects, its kinds and types. Perhaps he would not excel at questions of its usefulness: not one of his teachers or rulers had instructed him about such secrets because the question of purpose would never be asked by such people.”
From Hamam Balkania by Vladislav Bajac, translated from the Serbian by Randall A. Major. The novel, soon to be published by Istros Books, alternates between the 16th century story of two Christian boys taken from their families to enter the Sultan’s Turkish guards, one of whom becomes the Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, the other, the great Ottoman architect Koca Mimar Sinan, known as the “Michelangelo of the East”.
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Photo – Vladislav Bajac
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