Miloš K. Ilić, The Children of Neverville. Translated by John K. Cox. Grand Forks: The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota, 2025.
The Children of Neverville is a serious and tragic novel about young people in an exploding country. Set in 1990s Serbia, we see Rambo, a teenager in a medium-sized city, wrestling with the pressures of school, the generation gap, sexuality, life under sanctions, and, above all, his role as leader of a gang called the Centrals. The author, Miloš K. Ilić, deftly captures the big personalities of Rambo’s fellow students and fellow gang members as they challenge authority, balance the demands of friendship with their own fear and desire, and engage in an ominous arms race with other nearby “teams” or “crews” of young people. Written with pronounced cinematic sensibility, in the end we are faced with two material objects of vast significance in the supposedly limited but actually highly nuanced world of these young people: a bitterly contested bandana and a gun brought onto the school grounds.
Miloš K. Ilić is a writer from Pančevo (Serbia) who has tried his craftsmanship in almost all media (radio, TV, theater, marketing, internet content) before trying, last but not least, good ol’ book publishing. He writes under pseudonyms: Ana Miloš, Ivan Drnčula, Kosta Carić,Gordana Divjak and Vladan Olgin (for now). This is the first novel (also for now) out of his nine books.
John K. Cox teaches East European history at North Dakota State University in Fargo. He is also a literary translator, working from Serbian (BCMS), Slo
The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota 