Horrors of the Half-Forgotten: Explosive Memories in Ivan Vladislavić’s “The Firedogs”

Abstract

The article presents the first scholarly engagement with Ivan Vladislavić’s neglected short story “The Firedogs” (1996), which anticipates a concern that has gradually  become more important in this author’s work, namely how the past continues to infuse the material structures that order everyday life. I show here how Vladislavić’s story illuminates the ways in which present circumstances shape one’s recollection of the past, and how the past gives meaning to the present in an ongoing process of identity formation.