[citation needed] His novel Buick Riviera was made into a movie in 2008 by filmmaker Goran Rušinović, and the two were in turn awarded the Golden Arena for Best Screenplay.

Its heroes, who always carry with them their native lore, their religion and their mentality, though they have numerous reasons for feelings of love and understanding of others, become victims of their own inability to rise above their national background, above their old hatreds and the burden of historical conflicts.

Jergovic the master of melancholy presents driving as a journey into the past, awakens memories of companions, times of sadness and loneliness.

A central figure in the novel is Jalal Pljevljak, who is the experienced driver and a Muslim believer, whose faith prohibits the consumption of alcohol, drunk, and so risked disaster.

As the scene of religious, ethnic and political relations and conflict within the former multinational federation determines the flow and actions, so, for example, accused Pljevljak, both Croat and Muslim.

At the end of the wars in the nineties it was very popular among intellectuals and yellow press to relativize the guilt of the pre-war crime and surrender it to forgetfulness.

This controversy encouraged Zdravko Zima to resign his membership in the Croatian Writers' Society because he felt the leadership wasn't distancing themselves from the attacks on Katunarić.

A number of other writers cut ties with the association in a similar fashion, including Ivan Lovrenović who resigned because he felt Velimir Visković's disqualification called for the real and symbolic dismissal of Jergović in 2011.

[6] When CWS members asked Visković to apologize, he refused, citing years of insults to him, his family and other prominent writers.