Abstract
This paper investigates the symbolic and political identity of Belgrade and Sarajevo in Andrić’s novel The Woman from Sarajevo. By combining the theoretical assumptions of cog- nitive narratology with the concepts of narrative/cultural/symbolic geography and culture of memory, odonyms (street names) and commemorative names of various cultural/state insti- tutions in The Woman from Sarajevo have been interpreted. We established that odonyms (Njegoševa, Smiljanićeva, Stiška and Aleksandrova) functioned as the narrative means of political representation and various national ideologies of the past, which has opened up pos- sibilities for defining Andrić’s The Woman from Sarajevo as a political novel. The modern spirit of Andrić’s narrator has problematized Rajka’s attitude towards the grave/death in Sarajevo. Striving only to restore her father’s wealth, to regain the lost family property, Rajka believed in the renewal of individual life through the mediation of descendants. Rajka Radaković’s consciousness manifested the process of dememorization, the disappearance of symbolic sig- nifiers from Belgrade’s space. Thus, the heroine of Andrić’s novel unconsciously became the bearer of the politics of a new identity.
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