Andrej Nikolaidis: “Between Love and the World, I Always Choose Love”

Andrej Nikolaidis lives on the edge of the incident. In his novels, history is never a settled archive; it is a volatile invention, a relentless collision of politics, mysticism and moral failure. It is precisely this refusal to offer comforting fictions that places the Montenegrin writer on the edge of cultural and political fracture—most visibly when his effigy was publicly burned and later shot at in a town square in Herceg Novi.

For Nikolaidis, writing is an act of parrhesia—unmasked truth-telling that accepts its own danger. Situated within the unsettled memory of the post-Yugoslav region, his voice carries a singular urgency that resonated with me across borders, from my desk in Tehran. Drawn to the way The Coming and The Son bring together politics, history and existential collapse while resisting clean genre boundaries, I wanted to ask how a writer confronts nationalism, violence and collective amnesia without yielding to ideological comfort. Such questions travel beyond the Balkans without collapsing into easy equivalence.

The conversation that follows was conducted remotely through a written exchange. It does not seek to reconcile the contradictions of Nikolaidis’s public life, but rather to enter them.

Your writing explores the enduring trauma of the Balkan Wars and Yugoslavia’s dissolution. As someone from Iran—a region shaped by revolution and collective memory—how can literature bridge personal experiences of trauma with fraught national narratives?

Unlike reality, literature must make sense. Fiction is a structure that permeates everything: in that sense, literature is the ultimate art. For this reason, fiction is always political—even then, or should I say especially then, when it claims to be apolitical. Fiction always disseminates ideology.

This is the point. Not only is history fiction, but our memory is also structured like fiction. Our memories are a literary form. When things happen, we perceive them as swirling chaos, as a series of events that seem arbitrary, as if there is no clear connection between them. In memory, however, everything is always in order. To remember means to put everything in its place. It means to use imagination to fill in the gaps in memory, gaps in meaning. That’s why people often talk about a “better past.” No, the past was not better. It is better now, after we have subjected it to the influence of fiction.

My experience is this: behind that “we,” there are often dishonorable intentions. People are eager to hide behind “we.”

This brings me to a direct answer to your question. I have not written about collective, national narratives—except critically. I truly do not know how it is even possible to speak in the name of “we,” in the name of “us.” Who are we? When did we agree on our views? Who authorized me to speak in the name of “we”? My experience is this: behind that “we,” there are often dishonorable intentions. People are eager to hide behind “we.”

Collective nationalist narratives led to war in the former Yugoslavia, and that war caused me much pain—trauma, as we would say. Hence, my confrontation with these narratives has been uncompromising. I fought like a severely wounded man who has nothing left to lose.

In novels like The Coming, you critique nationalism and corruption. How do you balance the risk of disillusioning readers with the urgency of exposing systemic failures, especially in societies where dissent is suppressed?

My answer will be ideological, but that does not make it any less precise. Human nature is corrupt. Corruption is the so-called “natural state” of every society. Beauty is difficult. Virtue is difficult. Brilliance in anything requires a struggle against the corruption within oneself. A great pianist, a great writer, a great thinker—they have continuously fought against themselves, against the corruption within, against the need to give up, to stop practicing the piano for 10 hours a day, to stop writing hundreds of pages that will be burned because they are not good enough.

Societies that cannot tolerate criticism are like people who do not allow themselves to be criticized—they condemn themselves to mediocrity, limiting their own development. I have always feared false flattery more than unjust criticism.

Societies that cannot tolerate criticism are like people who do not allow themselves to be criticized—they condemn themselves to mediocrity, limiting their own development.

Your family’s history includes displacement. How does this legacy of exile inform your portrayal of marginalized voices, and what parallels do you see with refugee crises in the Middle East today?

Yes. I am of Greek origin. The Nikolaidis family comes from Pontic Greeks, that is, from the shores of the Black Sea. I was born in Sarajevo, which I left because of the Serbian aggression against Bosnia. I have only been to Greece once—I didn’t like it. My family was often forced to flee, to leave our city, to leave their whole lives behind.

However, I do not dare compare my family’s refugee history with the injustice and horror that the people of the Middle East are suffering. Among other things, because the crimes against them, Palestinians above all, are long-lasting, systematic, highly calculated, accompanied not only by silence but also by direct assistance from the so-called humanitarian, democratic West. You know, many people in the West—I am one of them—believe that the West’s relationship with the Middle East is the negation of all so-called Western values—unless we include colonialism under the term “Western values.” Here I am being sarcastic.

When we were attacked in Bosnia, at least we had the support of Western governments. That support was often hypocritical, insufficient, and too slow—but it existed. The West helped Bosnia survive. It really did. In the Middle East, the West plays exactly the opposite role. The West is the central problem, the source of the Middle East’s problems.

Montenegro’s political landscape has shifted dramatically post-Yugoslavia. As an Iranian journalist, I’m curious: How do you navigate self-censorship versus creative freedom when writing about authoritarian regimes or taboo subjects?

I do not self-censor. An important segment of my poetics is parrhesian speech. If I were to eliminate that speech out of fear of consequences, it would lead to aesthetic bankruptcy. What is parrhesia? Let us remind ourselves.

The word is, obviously, Greek: parrhesia means speaking freely. But parrhesia is not a matter of free speech. It is much more than that.

Explaining what parrhesia is, Foucault gives an example from Plutarch, whose text speaks about what Plato and then Dion said to Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse. Plato speaks about virtue in front of the tyrant, which enrages him, so the tyrant asks: “What are you looking for here?” Plato responds: “I am looking for a good man,” clearly implying that he has not found one in the ruler. Dion, on the other hand, tells Dionysius that he is worse than his predecessor, whom he replaced on the throne, thus risking the ruler’s favor and the privileges he enjoys at court.

As Plato leaves Sicily, Dionysius orders his men to capture him and sell him into slavery because, as the tyrant notes, a philosopher of such a lofty spirit would not mind the chains that bind him to the earth.

Parrhesia is, therefore, free, truthful speech. But not just any truthful speech. Parrhesia is not a pedagogical method, even though it involves a relationship in which the teacher teaches the student the truth. But it also implies that the student tells the teacher the truth, the real truth, about themselves.

It does not lead to the truth. It is not an invitation to dialogue, nor does it aim at education. Parrhesia is an incident: it is speech that is not spoken behind a mask, nor does it respect the mask of the one it is addressed to, the one who is (all-)powerful: it is speech thrown in the face, and therefore it will be understood as a challenge and an insult. Parrhesia usually provokes anger, in which the one who responds to the blow of truth abandons logos and resorts to violence.

Parrhesia is, therefore, a specific way of speaking the truth. It implies that the truth being spoken has serious consequences for the one who speaks it—and they know it. It implies a risk for the speaker, which includes death. This is, according to Foucault, the key to parrhesia.

There are, therefore, two fundamental elements of parrhesia: truth and danger. “Where danger dwells, salvation grows,” wrote Hölderlin. Where danger dwells, truth grows, and it frees, thus saving.

A person who practices parrhesia is constantly in danger: of losing friends, a job, social standing, opportunities for advancement. In societies like Montenegro, where it was always noon, everything was crystal clear, and things and people did not have shadows in which one could hide—contrasted with societies of dusk and long shadows—being a parrhesiast carried the danger of irreparable loss.

The parrhesiast is the opposite of the drunk person who unknowingly speaks the truth. The drunk person speaks the truth because they are unaware—of both the truth and the consequences—while the parrhesiast speaks precisely because they know the consequences, but fear of them does not touch them.

Truth is incidental. But the parrhesiast does not seek it for the sake of the incident, but because they believe it to be the supreme principle.

The parrhesiast is the opposite of the drunk person who unknowingly speaks the truth. The drunk person speaks the truth because they are unaware—of both the truth and the consequences—while the parrhesiast speaks precisely because they know the consequences, but fear of them does not touch them.

The parrhesiast does not apologize for the truth. They do not count on mercy. The parrhesiast is an enemy of hypocrisy, an enemy of all kinds of lies. “Lies build the order in the world,” wrote Kafka. From this, it follows that the parrhesiast is an enemy of the world. And the world is not gentle with its enemies.

Just as the parrhesiast is not gentle with the world. “If the world is against the truth, I am against the world,” said Athanasius of Alexandria.

So, every time I was judged because of my texts, when I was accused of inciting terrorism through my essays, when I was subjected to media attacks, and finally, when my effigy was burned in the square of Herceg Novi, a town in Montenegro, and followers of the Serbian Orthodox Church then shot at my burning effigy—I knew the consequences of what I wrote, and that is exactly why I wrote that way.

Your work merges folklore with unflinching realism, much like Iranian poets who’ve used myth to resist occupation or erasure. But whereas Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh preserved Persian identity, your myths often unsettle—exposing hypocrisy or historical amnesia. Do you see myth-making as a form of defiance, or does it risk becoming another kind of collective delusion?

My style and messages are very direct. I would even say brutal. Therefore, there is no need for me to use myth to retreat into allegory or any kind of hidden meaning. It’s a style that Thomas Bernhard cultivated: to say something unpleasant directly and then repeat it several times.

So, I haven’t created myths. In fact, I’ve dealt with their deconstruction. I’ve equally focused on deconstructing the myths created by any absolutist regime, as well as the so-called “democratic” myths. And there’s no small number of those—quite the opposite.

The lives of Balkan authors have much more in common with those of Middle Eastern authors than with those living in liberal democracies. Our struggles are similar. To be honest, I don’t have the patience for so-called first-world problems.

Writers like Hoda Barakat (Lebanon) or Elif Shafak (Turkey) explore similar themes of fractured identities. Do you feel a kinship with authors from the Middle East, and what might Balkan literature offer to regions in ideological conflict?

The lives of Balkan authors have much more in common with those of Middle Eastern authors than with those living in liberal democracies. Our struggles are similar. To be honest, I don’t have the patience for so-called first-world problems. Even if you have no other problems in life apart from what I must characterize as bourgeois whining, you should have enough imagination to understand that there are people who do not have electricity, water, or even one meal a day; people who are taken to prison for speaking the truth; there are children killed by the criminal army armed by so-called democracies, an army that, as we speak, is committing genocide in the name of the oppressor’s so-called “historical right to the land,” with the assistance of the so-called “free world.” I assume you understand that I despise first-world-problems art, which is not even art, but a pathetic, self-absorbed attempt at self-help.

In your view, what is the role of literature in resisting oppressive regimes? Do you believe that fiction can effect real change in society, or is its impact more about raising awareness and fostering empathy among readers?

The first is the second, and the second is the first. Both answers you offered are correct and inextricably linked. In any case: art is something essential and worth the sacrifice—or it is nothing at all.

Can we conclude our interview by discussing the theme of love? I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. Your work frequently engages with darker themes—how does love fit into your perspective on resistance and healing?

The law of supply and demand is relentless and applies to everything. What is scarce is expensive. That is why freedom, along with love, is the most expensive; that is why it is the greatest value. That is why freedom, like love, has no price.

Because there is no freedom, nor love, in matter.

Love truly is blind: in that lies its power. Love is more than blind. It’s not that it doesn’t see the world. It’s that the world doesn’t exist for it.

To live means to be a slave to matter and its law. Nothing that lives is free. Nothing—not even the pigeons that peck the bread given to them in city squares. Nothing that is subject to the law of Mother Nature, the most brutal of all cruel masters, has the slightest chance of freedom.

When we love, we reject the tyranny of matter. In love, we are finally free. Love resists matter—what we sometimes call reality. Love is capable of surviving all material evidence that opposes it, that tries to disprove any possibility for it. We love not so much because of, but in spite of. Love truly is blind: in that lies its power. Love is more than blind. It’s not that it doesn’t see the world. It’s that the world doesn’t exist for it.

Love is an Idea that does not strive to be realized in reality. It abolishes reality. Love abolishes the law, love is the queen who declares: I am the only law. Love is the crimson queen who did not inherit the throne, but conquered it. Love is pure; love is the purest form of violence.

Love is revolutionary. It is, like revolution, the youth of the Idea, the moment when the Idea demands that in its name, one has the right to do anything, even injustice. When that Idea is finally cognitively mapped and intellectually shaped, retold and explained, because the terror of love must somehow be stopped, the decadence of the Idea begins and its end is near. That’s how the Idea dies: whether it burns in its own terror or decays in its own law. That is, BTW, precisely why revolution must never end: it must be permanent. It must always remain young.

The end of love is the defeat of rebellion. When love withdraws, the world returns. Along with it, the brutal reign of necessity. The end of love is not a moment of sobriety. The return of reality, the return of the dark king, means the end of another possibility for a better world.

If you do not accept the reign of necessity; if you refuse to be obedient to that to which one must not be obedient—to that which teaches you that man is “just garbage that wails”… Then, despite everything warning you not to do it; despite the pain that is inevitable, though its alternative is only indifference, painful indifference; despite the common sense that warns you that surrender is the only reasonable course—still, you love.

Because it is like this: either love, or the world.

Between the two, I always choose love.

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