(ANSA) - UDINE, 08 MAG - "Lusitania is not a historical novel; it is a political allegory that speaks about our time. Because the past, unlike the future, is far more unpredictable. Except for one certainty: there is a constant repetition of the same mistakes." This is the view of Dejan Atanackovic, a Serbian writer, artist, and activist, who presented his novel Lusitania yesterday in Udine during a meeting on the "madness of war." A novel "conceived about ten years ago, but dealing with themes that are becoming increasingly contemporary," Atanackovic said, "events from the past that, in a certain sense, are more current than the present." The book deals with two episodes from World War I: the 1915 sinking of the passenger ship Lusitania, struck by a German torpedo in Irish waters, and the case of the Belgrade psychiatric clinic, which remained free territory after Serbia's 1915 occupation by the Dual Monarchy. In the current geopolitical situation, the author hopes to spark an awakening from "moral anesthesia." "People grow accustomed to absolutely horrible things happening just a few miles away, just as they did at the time in Serbia," Atanackovic added. "We are talking about nationalist rhetoric, about a state that is becoming less and less a state belonging to its citizens and more and more a criminal government. We all need to understand how much we have contributed, how passive we have been, and how passive our societies have been in allowing forms of political irrationality to create cultural categories." "I am convinced that certain social and cultural structures do exist, and it is important to create a dialogue among all these structures and institutions that carry weight in society and that can reach credible conclusions," he concluded. "An individual can be part of these structures, but cannot do it alone." (ANSA).