Fine Feats of the Five Cockerels Gang

The Fine Feats of the Five Cockerels Gang is a Marxist-Surrealist Yugoslav epic poem for children, written by Aleksandar Vuco and accompanied by Dusan Matic's photocollage illustrations and captions. The poem tracks the adventures of five scrappy, resourceful working-class boys who endeavor to free an equally plucky girl from the evil clutches of a convent school (and its fearsome nuns). While weighing in on various contemporary political issues, the story is unpredictable, action-packed and relayed in richly colloquial language. Matic's photocollages show "e;what happened in the meantime"e; between the "e;songs"e; (episodes) of the poem, providing clever twists to the linear plot as well as an illustration of the surrealist concepts of time, space and the transformative capabilities of art.