How to Tie Your Shoes is a confessional narrative that deals

with the relationship between a father and son—more

precisely it narrates this relationship’s absence into existence.

The novel begins when the narrator learns that his father is

terminally ill and decides to return home to arrange for his

medical care. Mixing the most private fragments of their

familial saga with the turbulent recent history of post-Yu-
goslav transition, the book connects seemingly divid-
ed fields of private and public and suggests a strong link

between the two facets of trauma: individual and collective.

[A] solid literary work of a complex, hopeless father-son relationship.

Nikola Petković (1962) is a Croatian writer, literary critic, translator, screenwriter, and scholar.