Pre-War Banja Luka as an Act of Recollection in Amir Alagić’s Ogledalo za krletku

The article analyses Amir Alagić’s novel Ogledalo za krletku [Birdcage mirror], concentrating mainly on its highly significant paratextual elements and the topic of memory as dominant theme. The story follows two plot lines, both connected to the city of Banja Luka, within a very complex narrative structure in which the investigation of a crime functions as a pretext for a process of memory retrieval. Starting from the interpretation of the novel’s title, the analysis suggests that every literary device used should be interpreted twofold. The narrator-protagonist openly addresses his search for childhood memories in several metanarrative comments that primarily deal with the instability and censoring of memory. Thus, memory itself assumes a dual use that is both experiential and self-reflexive. This autobiographical text is connected to the main corpus of Alagić’s works, where the interwining of the genres of the urban novel and the detective-story is a common thread.