Folktales about fairies, old mythological women from Croatia in a completely new light in the novel Vilikon. Through discussion of Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, which is written by author herself, from the novel, can be learned all about fairies in Croatia. Vilikon is a special contribution to the heritage and culture of the Croatian history, which in the novel through the character of Marco Polo ties with the Mongols and the Mongol Empire. The novel is structured as a play field magic square of the number 12, in which the chapters are listed.
“Parallel interpretations of postmodernist novels, Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino and Vilikon by Jasna Horvat confirm several postmodernist determinants within Brian McHale’s theoretical framework. Next to the ontological structure of both novels, the author seeks to show the narrative, formative and combinatorial structures. Literary procedures that contribute to their construction are: intertextuality, auto-reference, topoi, networks, and lemmatization. The backbone of both novels is a mutual intertext that implies mutual characters, but with a different theme and motif. Auto-reference in Invisible Cities is evident in the atlas metaphor, chess and reflection, whereas in Vilikon the auto-referential framework is based on the manuscript of the novel and the network metaphor. Postmodern topoi like mirrors, labyrinths, maps, travels, lexicons, and networks are also analyzed. Although most literary procedures coincide in both novels, the key for interpreting in Vilikon is a novelty compared to Invisible Cities.“
(Buljubašić, Varga-Oswald: Parallel interpretations of Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino and Vilikon by Jasna Horvat)