With the fall of the Berlin wall exile was exiled form Europe. Unfortunately, it was not exiled from the other parts of the world but it might – who knows? – some day totally evaporate from the terrestrial globe. This is at the moment hard to imagine as it is hard to imagine Europe without exiles in the 60s and 70s of the last century. The charm of history is the fact that it flows regardless of all expectations: "I can't believe it." or "I would never have guessed." are rhythmical mantras to which history dances its tiptoe dance.  On our toes, not on its own.

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David Albahari (born 1948 in Serbia) is a Serbian writer of Jewish origin residing in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Albahari writes mainly novels and short stories which are usually autobiographical. He is also an established translator from English into Serbian. He is a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He published the first collection of short stories Porodično vreme (Family Time) in 1973. He became better known to wider audience in 1982 with a volume Opis smrti (Description of Death) for which he got Ivo Andrić's award. In 1991 he became the chair of the Federation of Jewish Communes of Yugoslavia, and worked on evacuation of the Jewish population from Sarajevo. In 1994, he moved with his family to Calgary in the Canadian province of Alberta, where he still lives. He continues to write and publish in Serbian language. In the late eighties, Albahari initiated the first formal petition to legalize marijuana in Yugoslavia. His books were translated into several languages and five of them are available in English: Words Are Something Else (1996), Tsing (1997), Bait (2001), Gotz and Meyer (2003, UK; 2005, US) and Snow Man (2005). (Wikipedia)