Istros Books My Rivers.

by Faruk Šehić

Moje rijeke su zaista sjajna knjiga. I više od toga. Pozicija kritičara koji treba da takvu koncentraciju bola, tuge i razočaranja preporuči za čitanje u najmanju ruku je oksimoronska jer kako preporučiti nešto što u vama izaziva mučninu i tugu. Ipak, ubeđen sam da je ovo jedna od najboljih pesničkih knjiga napisanih na bhsc jeziku u poslednjih mnogo vremena. Čak iako nije najsavršenija, ona je poput bujice, vodene stihije, nemoguće je pred njom ostati ravnodušan. Faruk Šehić se njome potvrdio kao jedan od najvažnijih stvaralaca postjugoslovenske književnosti, a ja bih rekao i mnogo, mnogo šire.

Vladimir Arsenić

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published July 17, 2014

About the author

Faruk Šehić was born in 1970 in Bihać, in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Until the outbreak of war in 1992, he studied veterinary medicine in Zagreb. However, the then 22-year-old joined the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which he led a unit of 130 men. After the war he studied literature and has gone on to create his own literary works.
His second book ‘Hit depot’ (2003) was the absolutely literary bestseller in Bosnia despite that was a poetry book. In this book he made a sketches of a several main topic of his later works such as postwar life on the edge of society. His poems are about local (and global) feeling of capitalistic way of life mixed with desperate postwar life in ruins, remains of dead society in Sarajevo and Bosnia.
Literary critics have hailed Šehić as the leader of the ‘mangled generation’ of writers born in 1970s Yugoslavia, and his books have achieved cult status with readers across the whole region. His collection of short stories ‘Under Pressure’ (Pod pritiskom, 2004) was awarded the Zoro Verlag Prize. His debut novel ‘Quiet Flows the Una’ (Knjiga o Uni, 2011) received the Meša Selimović prize for the best novel published in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Croatia in 2011 and the EU Prize for Literature in 2013. His most recent book is a collection of poetry entitled ‘My Rivers’ (Moje rijeke, Buybook, 2014) for whom he received Risto Ratković Award for the best poetry book in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Croatia in 2014. His books are translated into french, italian, german, english, bulgarian, macedonian, polish, slovenian and hungarian language. Šehić lives in Sarajevo and works as a columnist and journalist in respected political magazine ‘BH Dani’.

Reviews

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of poems by Bosnian writer Faruk Šehić, flows in spirit with three European rivers, the Loire, the Spree and the Drina and beyond. There is a weary feeling, shot through with flashes of anger and grief, as the poet tries to find some understanding and relief from the burden he carries as a former soldier and survivor of war and genocide. He looks back to the two World Wars, and in particular to the sites of mass incarceration and death from the Holocaust. He spends time in Berlin but cannot find what he seeks. Back in Sarajevo, the bones and ghosts of the dead intrude on the effort to find some normalcy. The long shadow of war is hard to shake.
Šehić's verse is unadorned and direct. He avoids grand statements, returning again and again to questions of the value of life amid so much death, even when, on the surface, as certain degree of ordinary existence seems to have resumed. What do we risk forgetting. Direct, honest, and offering no easy answers, this is an affecting read, especially given the ongoing conflict in the Middle East that is once again proving that faith in humanity is fragile.

A longer review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2024/02/18/on...

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ich glaube, dass die Gedichte an der Übersetzung gelitten haben, aber wann schon nicht. Freue micht trotzdem, mich mit bosnischer Lyrik auf meine Bosnienreise vorzubereiten.