‘Like an apaurin’ are the words with which journalist Katarina Dimitrijević Hrnjkaš described the book ‘Prince of the Forest’ by Lider’s photo editor Ratko Mavar at the presentation held this Tuesday at the Kinoteka bar in downtown Zagreb. This is the second literary publication by Lider’s editor, which he self-published without the support of a publisher because, as he stated at the promotion, he wanted to tell the story himself, without the interference of others.
Prince of the Forest is a novel originally intended for young people, but the author himself claims that anyone can read it, and Dimitrijević Hrnjkaš said she would recommend the book to everyone; from a twelve-year-old child to those of the oldest age. It is a book, she says, that everyone will return to time and again and that relaxes, does not give direct advice, but allows you to become aware of yourself.
– Perhaps my sentences are not as finely polished as, for example, the precisely balanced lights and shadows in my black-and-white nudes or the harmonized compositions and poses in my portrait photographs. In this novel, it was more important for me to convey the idea of nature as an excellent space for learning about oneself and the idea of the diversity of energies of physical and spiritual experiences. In my first book ‘In God’s Amusement Park’, I recorded step by step my personal discovery of the spiritual world and my growth in awareness, through the form of dialogue. In this one, however, as a narrator, I followed the spiritual growth of an ordinary extraordinary young man and what happened to him during that growth on school holidays one summer in a small town by the forest – wrote Ratko Mavar in the preface, who spoke at the promotion about what the forest means to him and emphasized that in today’s time, when we look at screens almost all day, going to the forest, or to nature, and listening to oneself is something every individual needs.
