The Banquet in Blitva: A Novel in Three Books () is a political novel by Miroslav Krleà ¾a. The story takes place in the fictitious northeastern European nation of Blitva, which, after centuries of foreign rule and political instability, has become a newly independent state under a dictatorship headed by Colonel Kristian Barutanski. The novel is generally regarded as a satire of interwar Yugoslavia.
The novel is split up into three books, narrated by an observer "from a distant and foggy foreign country". The first two parts of the novel deal with the political situation in Blitva and two figures present in the country: Colonel Barutanski, its dictator, and Niels Nielsen, an intellectual and dissident. The third part reflect on Nielsen's life as a dissident, including his personal doubts and past actions. The first two parts were published in 1938 and 1939, respectively, but, due to political pressure, Krleà ¾a did not publish the last part until the 1960s. Only the first two parts of have been translated into English.
The book has been described as a satire of "eastern European backwardness and western European decadence" and a critique of rising fascist sympathies in interwar Yugoslavia. Other writers, such as , have compared the events in the novel to Józef Pià Âsudski's Poland.