Tag: Balkans

Writing and ideas from the eastern most of Europe’s three great southern peninsulas

Review Sarajevo Firewood, Saïd Khatibi

Saïd Khatibi’s polyphonic novel, Sarajevo Firewood, pays homage to the victims of civil war in Algeria and Bosnia in the 1990s, and gives the survivors a voice. Scarred by erratic memories and traumatic recall – indicative of the psychological wounds of war – writing is a way to come to terms with what happened.

“We might find a mass grave with a café or restaurant in front of it, which changed at night into a dance floor, on which the living took turns to move their bodies while the dead opposite them looked on silently.” Continue reading Review Sarajevo Firewood, Saïd Khatibi

2BooksReview Wild Woman, Marina Šur Puhlovski & Under Pressure, Faruk Šehić

What can the novels Wild Woman by Marina Šur Puhlovski and Under Pressure by Faruk Šehić tell us about the breakup of Yugoslavia which caused such a tectonic shift in Balkan identity?

Each to their war and its troubled aftermath: one in the domestic sphere, the other out on the field and in the trenches. Both are informed by terror, brutality, power struggles and stubborn memories which refuse to go away. The gender split seems clear: survivors of domestic violence are primarily women and war veterans are mainly men – each to their trauma.

Continue reading 2BooksReview Wild Woman, Marina Šur Puhlovski & Under Pressure, Faruk Šehić

Susan Curtis from Istros Books at Belgrade Book Fair

The opening ceremony of Belgrade Book Fair took place on Sunday 21 October, officially commencing one of the biggest publishing events of the region. There is no doubt that Serbia takes pride in this annual gathering of publishers and public, now in its 63rd year, with the writer and Academician Matija Bećković comparing readers’ attendance of the fair to worshippers in a church. Between his opening speech and that of the representative of the Guest of Honour – this year Morocco, the first Arab nation to have this accolade – the public was treated to performances from the opera singer Jasmina Trumbetaš Petrović, accompanied on piano. Continue reading Susan Curtis from Istros Books at Belgrade Book Fair

BB 10×10 Tour Waterstones, Nottingham, Christina Pribićević-Zorić, Susan Curtis

The fourth talk of the BookBlast® 10×10 tour, a nationwide celebration of independent publishing, features Istros Books, founded in 2011, to showcase the very best fiction and non-fiction from the Balkan region to a new audience of English speakers, through quality translation. Its authors include European prize winners, polemic journalists turned crime writers and social philosophers turned poets. Book Tickets

susan_curtis_kojakovic_bookblast_diary_interviewOn Thurs 27 Sept @waterstonesNG Susan Curtis, the founder of Istros Books, will lead a discussion with fellow translator, Christina Pribićević-Zorić, on The End of the World? How the Balkans writes the Holocaust. They will be joined by Georgia de Chamberet who is currently translating The Disappearance of Josef Mengele by Olivier Guez for Verso Books (2019).

Book extract: Doppelgänger by Daša Drndić, (October, 2018) translated by Susan Curtis & Celia Hawkesworth, consists of two stories that skilfully revisit the question of “doubles”, and how an individual is perpetually caught between their own beliefs and those imposed on them by society.  Meet Susan the translator-publisher in person on Thurs 27 Sept. @istrosbooks Continue reading BB 10×10 Tour Waterstones, Nottingham, Christina Pribićević-Zorić, Susan Curtis

Interview Christina Pribićević-Zorić, translator

Meet Christina Pribićević-Zorić in person at the 10×10 Tour event, Waterstones, Nottingham 6.30 p.m. Thursday 27 SEPT. Theme: The End of the World? How the Balkans writes the Holocaust. Book focus: The House of Remembering and Forgetting by Filip David (Serbia) and Doppelgänger by Daša Drndić (Croatia). With Susan Curtis, a translator and founding director of Istros Books, chair, translator Christina Pribićević-Zorić and Georgia de Chamberet (currently translating The Disappearance of Josef Mengele for Verso Books).

Tell us a little bit about yourself
I am from New York. My mother was Irish and my father was from the former Yugoslavia so I had a smattering of Serbo-Croatian when I went to Belgrade on a post-graduate scholarship. I went for a year and stayed for over twenty. Apart from translation, I have worked as a broadcaster and headed the Conference and Language Services Section at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. I now live in London.
 Continue reading Interview Christina Pribićević-Zorić, translator

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