Kelvin's Zero

A content of this novel is simple. Ida Alagar, the main character of the novel, is locked in a lift in one of the mansions in Milano, where she works as a house servant. A married couple Sforza, the owners of this” three-storey Taj Mahal”, went to America for one months and Ida’s “ chances of survival are equal to Kelvin’s zero”, the absolute zero, when “even atomic movement stops”. Twenty three year old incarcerated Ida remembers her past. There is a string of effective episodes: childhood, father’s death, a loss of virginity. This claustrophobic novel, written in 1987, symbolically forecast bloody reality of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Bosnian-Herzegovina lift is still stuck between a lower and upper floor. And contemporary reality of Bosnia and Herzegovina “is more fantastic than the most fantastic phantasy”, as Mahmutefendic said, borrowing the expression from Dostoyevsky.