I read the novel “Under the Crocodile’s Skin” as one of the anonymous manuscripts submitted to the VBZ competition for the best unpublished novel in 2024, when it entered the semi-finals of that award. The novel attracted me, and I believe the other members of the jury, primarily because of its topic, which is still too little discussed in public and written about in literature, namely transgenderism, or “gender dysphoria”. However, since as a literary jury we do not evaluate topics, but literary performances, it is more accurate to say that we were attracted by the approach the author takes to the topic.

At first glance, it is about two girls who do not feel good in their own skin (like in crocodile skin), with one of them, Klara, being a member of a modern family from Novi Zagreb and a girl from the 21st century, while the other is from the early 20th century and from the Cetina region, and her name is Srna. I would say that even those who are only familiar with canonical reading titles have no major problem connecting the name Srna with Dinko Šimunović’s short story “The Rainbow”. And while we recall the school interpretations of this story in which the girl Srna, realizing all the fields of freedom that would open up to her if she were not a girl but a boy, decides to run under a rainbow in order to fulfill her long-standing belief and legend, the author of this novel gives these interpretations a new dimension. The intertextual dialogue with Šimunović’s short story is the most innovative approach in this novel, and the merging of the destinies of the two girls (one of whom is even doubly ‘literary’) simultaneously points to new insights into possible interpretations of this literary classic.

Klara and Srna, regardless of the time that separates them, face the same problems; First of all, it is their realization that they live in the wrong body, the desire to “escape from their skin” and be who they are, their maladjustment and alienation, and then their misunderstanding of the environment in which they exist, primarily their own families. Times are different, the methods their families use are also different, their stories will end differently, in accordance with time, but there is much that connects them. Although Klara will change grammatical gender much faster and more self-consciously when speaking in the first person singular, both girls try to force themselves not to speak at all, that they do not have their own voice and therefore their true identity. This novel speaks on behalf of such people. Both will, namely, go through a painful path of punishment and self-punishment, both will be unhappy, maladjusted, weak, lost and sad and will feel that “crocodile skin is like armor”.

But while the unfortunate Srna will remain only with the wish that she will eventually utter to her father – “I just wanted to be your son.”, for Klara, life in the 21st century, which also includes smart psychiatrists, the development of science and a somewhat greater (although still too little) tolerance towards those who do not fit into the old and proven molds, will bring new opportunities that she will take advantage of. The emphasis of this novel, in which the roles of the two girls alternate, is on their very emotional experience of their own states and interactions with others. Both will experience rudeness and misunderstanding from their surroundings, but both will also feel close to one of the protagonists of this novel. Both will show courage in self-knowledge and self-discovery, but the outcomes will still differ, in accordance with the times to which they belong. In this context, the author will conclude her novel — in which she delves deeply into the psychologization of the protagonists, trying and succeeding in ‘stepping into someone else’s shoes’ with a lot of understanding and empathy — with the belief that the time we live in is after all much more empathetic and understanding, which gives the entire novel a significant, and even more optimistic, framework.

“Under the Crocodile’s Skin” is a novel that speaks about an important topic in an original way and as such is certainly worth reading, because in life, as in literature, it is important to warn that it is not necessary to escape from your skin because it can be changed.