Catalogue Diabolique

In the vein of Goethe’s Der Zauberlehrling, Vignjevic’s Catalogue Diabolique is a fantastical tale of Mata Gradinar, a newly appointed Pedagogical Faculty post-doc whose well-received graduate paper throws him into a world of secrets revealed by his work.

This all starts when he goes to the bookbinders to pick up his finished work where instead he finds that – although the book has been bound – there is no text on the pages. At first confused to the point of not even protesting, Mata Gradinar discovers that he has more than empty pages in his hands, but rather a catalog of empty pages that allows him to discover all the wrongdoers in his society. Mata then embarks to uncover all with the help of his best friend Eroneous Petroneus.

At first Mata Gradinar is extremely careful what he writes in the book, since everything he writes within it reveals the deep history, and possible future of that subject. As the tale develops so does Mata’s curiosity with regard to his wanting to rid his society of all evil doing, primarily by exposing the vast corruption that surrounds him.

The story in the book has been carefully chosen by the author to emphasize the length to which corruption can spread in any given society, thereby diminishing the value that the same society puts on human life.