This article offers a concise yet comprehensive look at Atlantida : the author’s background, the novel’s narrative architecture, its core themes, critical reception, and why it matters today.

Scholar Bojan Žikić's 2022 paper explicitly links Atlantida with Battlestar Galactica , noting that both works suggest that human society reflects human nature. The robots, ironically, emulate human patterns of othering and conflict.

Borislav Pekić’s 1988 novel Atlantida (Atlantis) is a foundational work of Yugoslavian philosophical science fiction and the final part of his anthropologic trilogy, portraying a dystopian future where humanity is supplanted by androids. It explores themes of totalitarianism, artificial intelligence, and the distortion of history, making it a critical text for analyzing human identity and technological anxieties.

: Analyze the literary devices used by Pekic, such as imagery, foreshadowing, irony, and point of view. How do these devices contribute to the overall effect of the story?

Atlantida has sparked a renewed interest in across the former Yugoslav states. Workshops in Belgrade, Zagreb, and Sarajevo now include modules on “mythic realism,” a term that Pečić inadvertently coined in an interview.

Pekić's narrative is a deliberate provocation, challenging the reader to confront uncomfortable truths about a society that "punishes the existence of an inquisitive spirit" and "harasses individuality," all while ostensibly promoting it. This critique of a world trapped in the "general illusion" of progress where the "island illusion of isolation" can suddenly vanish is perhaps more resonant today than ever before.

(PDF) “Atlantida” kao Pekićev antropološki epos - ResearchGate

True to his philosophical roots, Pekić presents a cyclical view of history. The rise and fall of civilizations—from ancient Atlantis to the futuristic machine empire—suggests an inescapable cosmic loop. Humanity creates technology, technology destroys humanity, and from the ashes, the mythic cycle begins anew. Literary Style and Narrative Technique

To fully appreciate Atlantis , one must understand the era in which it was written and Pekić’s own life experiences. Pekić was a political dissident who spent years as a political prisoner in communist Yugoslavia before emigrating to London. His firsthand experience with totalitarian regimes deeply influenced his literary worldview. He viewed history not as a linear progression of progress, but as a cyclical trap where humanity repeatedly succumbs to authoritarian impulses and self-destruction.

Explores biological apocalypse and the thin veneer of human civilization through a rabies outbreak at Heathrow Airport.

Within Pekić’s sci-fi trilogy, Atlantis acts as the philosophical anchor:

Imagine a city whose map is written in contradictions: marble colonnades that dissolve into reeds, a senate that debates truth like a currency, and a library whose catalogues rearrange themselves according to who’s reading. The air tastes faintly of ozone and oranges. People arrive by different reasons — exile, research, love, debt — and stay for other reasons still: accident, obsession, or the slow pleasure of watching a civilization unmake itself.