The Many Secretive Voices of Bosnia: An Appraisal of Derviš Sušić’s novel Spies
The Many Secretive Voices of Bosnia: An Appraisal of Derviš Sušić’s novel Spies

Summary/Abstract: There are few contemporary novels that appear to embody in such a convincing way the distinctively syncretic cultural and historical peculiarities of Bosnian identity – or, to quote Muhamed Filipović’s 1967 seminal essay, the “spirit of Bosnia” – such as Spies (Uhode, 1972) by author Derviš Sušić (1925-1990); significantly, the writer’s son Muhamed Sušić aptly described it in a recent interview as a sort of literary “ID card” of the country, pointing out how his father successfully achieved his goal to portray in a vivid and concrete manner all those elements that determined the history of Bosnia throughout the centuries, while also contributing to the development of local society’s peculiar multi-religious and multi-ethnic features. In fact, the author apparently chose to give an account of the country’s long and complex history by emphasizing the ability of its inhabitants to adapt and survive to the different foreign political entities that subdued (or aimed to subdue) the Balkan region, above all the Habsburg and Ottoman empires, by superficially including in their heritage the occupiers’ different cultural and religious traits without acquiescing to complete submission and assimilation. Interestingly, this particular kind of resistance, which the novel implicitly presents as a unifying factor among the different ethnicities living in Bosnia, is described from the perspective both of native and foreign spies, operating in the country’s territory in diverse but equally crucial time periods; indeed, the novel mostly consists in a fragmentary collection of fictional reports sent by local informers to their superiors, which, by alternating with other heterogeneous pseudo-historical text materials (such as coded messages, archive papers, hearing transcripts and even death warrants), provides a polyphonic portrayal of Bosnian society during the most significant events of the country’s history.

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