Kelvin's Zero

About the Book

A content of this novel is simple. Ida Alagar, the main character of the novel, is locked in a lift in one of the mansions in Milano, where she works as a house servant. A married couple Sforza, the owners of this” three-storey Taj Mahal”, went to America for one months and Ida’s “ chances of survival are equal to Kelvin’s zero”, the absolute zero, when “even atomic movement stops”. Twenty three year old incarcerated Ida remembers her past. There is a string of effective episodes: childhood, father’s death, a loss of virginity. This claustrophobic novel, written in 1987, symbolically forecast bloody reality of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Bosnian-Herzegovina lift is still stuck between a lower and upper floor. And contemporary reality of Bosnia and Herzegovina “is more fantastic than the most fantastic phantasy”, as Mahmutefendic said, borrowing the expression from Dostoyevsky.

About the Author

Sead Mahmutefendic was born on 29th May 1949 in Sarajevo. He graduated from faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade in 1973. After obtaining his degree he started teaching and writing. His entire literary work is comprised under the title ‘Devil’s Comedy’. He wrote 24 books, 13 of them novels. His chosen novels are ‘Kelvin’s Zero’ and Fish and One-eyed Jack’. In June 2012 an international symposium about his work took place in Sarajevo under the title ‘Modern heretic apocryphal script about ante-apocalypse.