Young Woman as Second-Hand Goods – a Serbian novel about male ostentation and female self-irony

As painful and sensitive as the subject matter is, Serbian author Milica Vučković has written a witty book about emotional abuse and male psychological terror against women. "The Fatal Outcome of Sports Injuries" tells the story of a young woman's journey through life when she falls in love with an intellectual Balkan macho who is "unbearably attractive," pathologically jealous, and unpredictable. The fact that he sometimes beats her is considered one of the lesser evils of her life.

In interviews, the author stated that this was the story of a friend, mixed with her own experience. Her ex-boyfriend, the much more famous writer Vladimir Tabašević, promptly felt so slandered that the story circulated as gossip in Belgrade's feature pages. Milica Vučković, who until then had been primarily successful as a painter, depicts in this gripping novel the struggle of a kind-hearted woman caught in the web of a psychotic manipulator.

The first-person narrator, Eva (like the author), grew up in the southwestern outskirts of Belgrade. Her father was a gymnastics teacher, her mother a greengrocer; her much younger sister, the youngest of the family, graduated from university. Eva, on the other hand, works unambituously as a secretary in an IT company, marries the boring Tomislav—"a good guy"—and has a child, Mario, her "greatest gift in life."

Naturally, this marriage soon falls apart, and Eva sets out in search of new happiness. "At over thirty and with a two-year-old child," she realizes, she's clearly a "second-hand commodity." She finds it all the more wonderful when, among all the "men with potbellies," a truly magnificent man appears: a writer with muscular arms and even stronger sayings about "social justice, gender equality," who dazzles her with the vocabulary of French master thinkers. Eva falls hopelessly under this pompous Victor, but first she has to Google an explanation of the word "emancipation."

The humor in this tragic story also arises from the author's repeated countering of male ostentation with female self-irony, making Google the constant life coach of the unhappy and naive Eva. This creates a riotous comedy, written in a language of elegant tension (flexibly translated by Rebekka Zeinzinger), where a nasty surprise could lurk on almost every page. For the jealous rage and moodiness of the wicked Viktor are as inexhaustible as the misfortune of the poor young woman plagued by love.

The author-muscle man drives a wedge between Eva and her family. He's constantly working on a "masterpiece," gets a column in a major newspaper, only to lose it again, moves to Germany, and lures his lover there as well, from the rain in Belgrade to the fire in Stuttgart. There he becomes a construction worker, she a cleaning lady and later a kitchen helper. Their little son, Mario, temporarily left with his grandparents, arrives later. Things could work out, but love isn't easy in a moldy German basement apartment.

The physical violence wouldn't even be the worst part, and it always follows the same pattern. When he hits her, she's initially just stunned, and then he sobs and cries, as if in apology. She falls for this trick again and again and forgives him. To protect him, she officially claims her fall from a moving car as a skiing accident. Viktor's arrogant cynicism, his dominant and destructive masculinity, and Eva's desire for harmony balance each other out for a long time.

Things only get truly dire when, in her love and fear of missing out, she begins to desire a child together. A false pregnancy then becomes the temporary climax of this female tragedy. And the story's open ending, a soap opera of emotional dependency, cries out for a sequel to this terribly entertaining novel.

Milica Vučković: The Fatal Outcome of Sports Injuries. Novel. Translated from Serbian by Rebekka Zeinzinger. Zsolnay-Verlag, Vienna 2025, 190 pp., CHF 34.90.