A great man is one who collects knowledge the way a bee collects honey and uses it to help people overcome the difficulties they endure - hunger, ignorance and disease!
- Nikola Tesla

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
- Franklin Roosevelt

While their territory has been devastated and their homes despoiled, the spirit of the Serbian people has not been broken.
- Woodrow Wilson

Behind God's Back

Behind God's Back
Behind God's Back is the saga of a Serbian female physician's journey through the trials and travesties of World War I, World War II and the communist era. The story fills in historic gaps of these tumultuous events from a unique Balkan point of view; it highlights how small nations struggle to survive when caught in the direct pathway of major nations' ambitions.  A powerful and poignant love story that faces many challenges intertwines throughout the saga. Desa Jovanovic witnesses and experiences such misery in World War I that she decides to become a medical doctor. After the war, she wins a scholarship from Serbia's ally, France, to study medicine in Montpellier, France. Determined to take advantage of her scholarship, Desa keeps her nose to the grindstone regardless of the convivial atmosphere of Montpellier in the aftermath of the war. Despite her determined stance, she is intrigued with a tall, handsome Serbian law student, Danilo Marić, whom she must fight to win from a beautiful French student. After many setbacks, Desa captures the heart and love of Danilo and they're married in an early morning service in Belgrade.

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Deaths and births, careers and relationships cement and sometimes rip apart the relationship. Overall, however, the period of calm in Europe between the wars is generally favorable for the young couple. Everything deteriorates when Hitler's armies goose-step across Europe. The initial bombing of Belgrade in April, l941 claims 20,000 victims and it's a downhill slide from there. Amid the bombing, shelling and rigid Nazi occupation of Belgrade and its environs, Desa tries with all means available to her to save her patients and her family. Danilo joins the resistance and is imprisoned. When the occupation of Serbia finally ends with the entry of Soviet troops routing out the Germans, citizens rejoice. The Russians lead the way for Tito's Partisans to now occupy Yugoslavia. Soon the Yugoslavs learn that the communist rule will be just as cruel as the former Nazi occupation. How Desa and Danilo, their family and friends survive, or don't, the major events of the early 20th century rips across the pages of Behind God's Back. Also, Desa's medical journey explores the difficulties and progress of medicine in the 20th century. Behind God's Back can perhaps be put in a similar category with Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese; Corelli's Mandolin and Birds Without Wings, Louis de Bernieres; and Shaghai Girls, Lisa See.

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Aleksandar Petrov

Aleksandar Petrov
Aleksandar Petrov, born in Nis (Yugoslavia) 1938, received his Ph.D. at the University of Zagreb. For many years he was Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Literature and Art in Belgrade and Director of the History of Literature Department.

As an outstanding poet and novelist, Aleksandar Petrol is featured in the Dictionary of Literary Biography (v. 181, 242-250 p.p., Washington D.C. and London 1997) as one of the most important Serbian writers of the post World War II period. He has served as President of the Writers’ Association of Serbia and Acting President of the Writers’ Association of the former Yugoslavia. Petrov is a member of the International P.E.N. and several other literary and academic associations.

He has taught at over ten universities in the U.S.A. and has lectured extensively in many countries of the world. Since 1993, he is affiliated with The University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, U.S.A.  Petrov has published 8 books of poems in Serbia and translations of his books were published – in Britain, France, Spain, Sweden, Romania, Poland, Israel, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and the U.S.A. His poems were translated into 29 languages and included in anthologies of World, European, Yugoslav and Serbian poetry.

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The Meaning of Reality

The Meaning of Reality

Essays on Existence and Communion, Eros and History

by Christos Yannaras

The collection of articles traces the thought of Christos Yanaras through his long journey in discovering the meaning of existence, communion, eros, and history. It is a cause of immense joy that no fewer than twenty articles of passionate significance and substance have at present been gathered together in this volume under the title The Meaning of Reality.

Yannaras is undoubtedly one of the most significant thinkers of our time. Kallistos Ware once described him as "the most creative and prophetic religious thinker at work in Greece today," while Rowan Williams characterizes him as "one of the most significant Christian philosophers in Europe." His very wide and no less deep education helps him to develop an inimitable blend of philosophy, theology, and social criticism, and to speak in an original way about the traditional and contemporary issues of human existence, as well as the latest challenges of modern empirical science and political engagement. A detailed knowledge of the writings of the Holy Fathers has always been his foundation amidst the labyrinth of modern thought - which is inimately bound up with psychoanalysis, environmental issues, human rights, postmodernism, and pluralism , to mention just a few. Insistence on the primacy, uniqueness, and eternal value of human personality prevails in almost all his works and inspires his own vigorous theological and ecumenical engagement, based on the Orthodox eucharistic and ascetic tradition.

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