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Balkan Noir
We Trade Our Night for Someone Else's Day
A thriller of the ex-Yugoslavia Wars.
The city of Vukovar, situated on Croatia's easternmost periphery, across the Danube River from Serbia, was the site of some of the worst violence in the wars that rocked ex-Yugoslavia in the early '90s. It is referred to only as "the city" throughout this taut political thriller from one of Europe's most celebrated young writers. In this city without a name, fences in schoolyards separate the children of Serbs from those of Croats, and city leaders still fight to free themselves from violent crimes they committed--or permitted--during the war a generation ago. Now, it is left to a new generation--the children, now grown up, to extricate themselves from this tragic place, innocents who are nonetheless connected in different ways to the crimes of the past.
Nora is a journalist assigned to do a puff piece on the perpetrator of a crime of passion--a Croatian high school teacher who fell in love with one of her students, a Serb, and is now in prison for having murdered her husband. But Nora herself is the daughter of a man who was murdered years earlier under mysterious circumstances. And she wants, if not to avenge her father, at least to bring to justice whoever committed the crime. There's a hothouse intensity to this extraordinary noir page-turner because of how closely the author sets the novel within the historical record. This city is unnamed, the story is fictional, so it can show us what actually happened there.
The city of Vukovar, situated on Croatia's easternmost periphery, across the Danube River from Serbia, was the site of some of the worst violence in the wars that rocked ex-Yugoslavia in the early '90s. It is referred to only as "the city" throughout this taut political thriller from one of Europe's most celebrated young writers. In this city without a name, fences in schoolyards separate the children of Serbs from those of Croats, and city leaders still fight to free themselves from violent crimes they committed--or permitted--during the war a generation ago. Now, it is left to a new generation--the children, now grown up, to extricate themselves from this tragic place, innocents who are nonetheless connected in different ways to the crimes of the past.
Nora is a journalist assigned to do a puff piece on the perpetrator of a crime of passion--a Croatian high school teacher who fell in love with one of her students, a Serb, and is now in prison for having murdered her husband. But Nora herself is the daughter of a man who was murdered years earlier under mysterious circumstances. And she wants, if not to avenge her father, at least to bring to justice whoever committed the crime. There's a hothouse intensity to this extraordinary noir page-turner because of how closely the author sets the novel within the historical record. This city is unnamed, the story is fictional, so it can show us what actually happened there.
240 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 1, 2016
25 people are currently reading
528 people want to read
About the author
Ivana Bodrožić
22 books128 followersIvana is a Croatian poet and writer.
She studied philosophy and Croatian Language and Literature in Zagreb.
She was awarded for her poetry book Korak u tamu (Pace into the Darkness) with the Goran-award for young writers, as well as the Kvirin Award in 2005.
Her poems have been published in various newspapers, magazines and anthologies, and some of them have been translated into English, German and Polish.
Her first novel Hotel Zagorje is a coming-of-age-novel. It's a book about the girl's life as a refugee, sharing a few squremetres with her mother and her brother, all of them waiting for a message of the lost father.
Ivana currently lives in Zagreb with her husband and two daughters.
She studied philosophy and Croatian Language and Literature in Zagreb.
She was awarded for her poetry book Korak u tamu (Pace into the Darkness) with the Goran-award for young writers, as well as the Kvirin Award in 2005.
Her poems have been published in various newspapers, magazines and anthologies, and some of them have been translated into English, German and Polish.
Her first novel Hotel Zagorje is a coming-of-age-novel. It's a book about the girl's life as a refugee, sharing a few squremetres with her mother and her brother, all of them waiting for a message of the lost father.
Ivana currently lives in Zagreb with her husband and two daughters.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews
April 10, 2021
One of the embedded goals inside my Europe 2021 reading project is to better understand the conflicts between groups in the Balkans. That requires some reading in translation from authors with different backgrounds.
Ivana Bodrožić sets this novel in Vukovar, Croatia, and it is known but never named in the novel. Vukovar was the location of some of the first massacres during the Balkan wars, and only began it's reintegration in 1998. Now Croats and Croatian Serbs (aka Serbians) live tentative and segregated lives with a lot of violent history beneath the surface.
There are multiple characters in this novel dealing with violence in the recent past. Nora is a journalist sent to write a lighter piece about a teacher's relationship with a student and murder of her husband (ha, I know I said lighter, but it's the context that makes it so) - then there is the taxi driver, the school principal and mayor desperate to maintain control, and more. It took a while to keep the stories straight but only because of how many places and ways they connect, and how much of the context I'm missing as someone who didn't live through it. (I lived during but not through.)
The translator's note in the back is incredibly useful..she explains that when the book came out in 2016, people were very angry because of how it goes below the surface of things people don't want to acknowledge or deal with. This isn't a "good people on both sides" tale, it's rather the opposite, and it's hard to grasp the why's behind it. I've spent time searching for clarification - what is the difference between Serbian and Croatian? (Even in the realm of cooking, the YouTube comments to different versions of the same recipe are often territorial.) What took place in the 1990s? What existed before Yugoslavia? It could take a lifetime to grasp it.
One thing that's becoming clear in some of the recent books I've read is that whether or not the differences "exist," many of the countries formerly known as Yugoslavia are working hard to create differences, whether that's linguistic (alphabet choice or even some interesting changes in pronunciation that are emerging), religious, and more.
I think it's important to note the author was born in Vukovar in 1982 and her family was displaced by the war, so it is personal and her point of view is necessarily from what I imagine is a trauma perspective. At the very least I don't believe she can be objective. Not that she needs to be for a novel, and she does allow for nuance even in the Serbian characters.
Also important to note that the English translation comes from an unapologetically political and dare I say left-leaning independent publisher, which certainly centers some stories more than others. I don't expect one book to hold all points of view but I personally don't know enough about it yet to weigh in on if she "got it right."
I had a copy from the publisher through Edelweiss, and it comes out April 20th, 2021.
Ivana Bodrožić sets this novel in Vukovar, Croatia, and it is known but never named in the novel. Vukovar was the location of some of the first massacres during the Balkan wars, and only began it's reintegration in 1998. Now Croats and Croatian Serbs (aka Serbians) live tentative and segregated lives with a lot of violent history beneath the surface.
There are multiple characters in this novel dealing with violence in the recent past. Nora is a journalist sent to write a lighter piece about a teacher's relationship with a student and murder of her husband (ha, I know I said lighter, but it's the context that makes it so) - then there is the taxi driver, the school principal and mayor desperate to maintain control, and more. It took a while to keep the stories straight but only because of how many places and ways they connect, and how much of the context I'm missing as someone who didn't live through it. (I lived during but not through.)
The translator's note in the back is incredibly useful..she explains that when the book came out in 2016, people were very angry because of how it goes below the surface of things people don't want to acknowledge or deal with. This isn't a "good people on both sides" tale, it's rather the opposite, and it's hard to grasp the why's behind it. I've spent time searching for clarification - what is the difference between Serbian and Croatian? (Even in the realm of cooking, the YouTube comments to different versions of the same recipe are often territorial.) What took place in the 1990s? What existed before Yugoslavia? It could take a lifetime to grasp it.
One thing that's becoming clear in some of the recent books I've read is that whether or not the differences "exist," many of the countries formerly known as Yugoslavia are working hard to create differences, whether that's linguistic (alphabet choice or even some interesting changes in pronunciation that are emerging), religious, and more.
I think it's important to note the author was born in Vukovar in 1982 and her family was displaced by the war, so it is personal and her point of view is necessarily from what I imagine is a trauma perspective. At the very least I don't believe she can be objective. Not that she needs to be for a novel, and she does allow for nuance even in the Serbian characters.
Also important to note that the English translation comes from an unapologetically political and dare I say left-leaning independent publisher, which certainly centers some stories more than others. I don't expect one book to hold all points of view but I personally don't know enough about it yet to weigh in on if she "got it right."
I had a copy from the publisher through Edelweiss, and it comes out April 20th, 2021.
April 11, 2020
Uhhh, s Ivanom po tko zna koji put bride uši od šamara. Dakako, za mene koji sam se već prije par godina ostavio TV programa i novina, ovo čitanje je bila trauma jer je realističnost Hrvatske preteško svariti, a navedene likove i mjesto ne možete promašiti, oni su jednostavno prepisani iz novinskih članaka.
Za nas koji bježimo od hrvatske stvarnosti u svijet fikcije ovo jest svetogrđe, povreda zadnje oaze odmora, jer kad me pitaju zašto čitam - ja kažem da u romanima pravda uvijek pobjedi, za razliku od TV dnevnika.
No, trebaju li Hrvatskoj ovakva djela? Djela sa stavom o prošlosti i sadašnjosti? Trebaju, to je nepobitno. Tko ih ima pravo napisati? Vukovarska prognanica kojoj je otac ubijen na Ovčari? Svakako. Autentičnost je zapravo najveći krimen ovog, inače tečno napisanog romana sa svim elementima koje jedan thriller treba imati.
Za nas koji bježimo od hrvatske stvarnosti u svijet fikcije ovo jest svetogrđe, povreda zadnje oaze odmora, jer kad me pitaju zašto čitam - ja kažem da u romanima pravda uvijek pobjedi, za razliku od TV dnevnika.
No, trebaju li Hrvatskoj ovakva djela? Djela sa stavom o prošlosti i sadašnjosti? Trebaju, to je nepobitno. Tko ih ima pravo napisati? Vukovarska prognanica kojoj je otac ubijen na Ovčari? Svakako. Autentičnost je zapravo najveći krimen ovog, inače tečno napisanog romana sa svim elementima koje jedan thriller treba imati.
November 29, 2016
Nikako mi se nije svidjelo. Kao da je guglala kako napisati politički triler i onda pratila upute. Mogla je biti samo krimi priča i da je malo bolje napisana bila bi bolja od ovoga. Ovaj politički kontekst me smorio. Pripovjedački glas je nepostojeći, ali stava zato ima za tri knjige. Mogla bi nam prodati svašta da zna kako. Ali ne zna, pa samo čitamo Ivanin stav na 150 stranica. Ne da mi se toliko stava probavljati ni od autora koji imaju čitljiv stil, a kamo li od nje. Oni podnaslovi s pjesmama ekv-a su vrhunac pretencioznosti, Milan se u grobu okreće. Ne znam što mi bi da nakon Hotela Zagorje očekujem bolje od nje, al volim misliti da ljudi napreduju, pa rekoh da vidim, čini mi se zanimljivo. Tko mi kriv! Ivana Bodrožić ima pretenzije biti hrvatska Anna Frank, ne zaostaje osobnom tragedijom, ali žalosno zaostaje talentom.
December 8, 2016
ISUSE KRISTE TKO OVO ŠTAMPA :////
ja još gluplja kad ne znam ostavit knjigu kad vidim da je smeće
ja još gluplja kad ne znam ostavit knjigu kad vidim da je smeće
January 22, 2024
A journalist, Nora Kirin, returns to the anonymous city where she grew up to investigate a crime that is important to people who count. It has the potential to inflame people. “She knew what ours and theirs meant around here.” The murder involves ‘one of theirs’ sleeping with ‘one of ours’, and a bit of spice. “She’d rather be writing about other things. She ached to have a go at the people of the top.” The country is bitterly divided. The leaders of the conflicting sides like the idea of the divide. When their paths cross, they don’t glare at each other. “Their nods to each other were like silent high-fives. After so many people had been killed in and around the city, stoking the situation to the white heat of conflict would be a breeze, wouldn’t it?”
Nora’s father was one of those who spoke up against the cynical fanning of mutual violence. He paid for it with his life. Her mother has grown weary of asking for justice. We are given brief glimpses of the violent past. “Blood was the colour of the 1990s.” For one principal character, a memory of her earlier career is of the boss “smacking croupiers with a baseball bat whenever one of them began to lose”. In a prisoner camp, territorial fighters “sniffed out the stench of fear and discovered the fragile boy hidden behind his dad.” Nora’s partner-in-crime – in the end, she must seek revenge for the past – is Marko, a taxi driver who has just about hung on to his own humanity after having been a dazed participant in barbarism.
The city is never named in the book, but reviews such as this one in The Modern Novel state that it is Vukovar. In any case, “once a city has been ravaged and levelled, nothing can bring it back to life.”
The author seems to write from her gut. This is clearly no formula-based work, with an inciting incident, climax, and resolution. There is a complex web of inciting incidents, and in the end, there cannot be a neat resolution, let alone a happy one. This makes sense. As Nora Kirin reflects, “(everything) was linked to everything else.”
This interview with Asymptote Journal explains how Ivana Bodrožić has become unpopular in her homeland because of her non-partisan writing: “Writing about ‘our sins’ is much more threatening and complex.” There is more about what makes Bodrožić’s writing powerful in this World Literature Today article, which also explains the origins of the title.
This is a rare, genre-defying work that goes beyond labels like ‘dark’. I know nothing about the Yugoslav Wars, but I got a sense that this work does justice to how complex things were and are. I listed to the audio book narrated by Xe Sands, based on Ellen Elias-Bursać’s translation.
Nora’s father was one of those who spoke up against the cynical fanning of mutual violence. He paid for it with his life. Her mother has grown weary of asking for justice. We are given brief glimpses of the violent past. “Blood was the colour of the 1990s.” For one principal character, a memory of her earlier career is of the boss “smacking croupiers with a baseball bat whenever one of them began to lose”. In a prisoner camp, territorial fighters “sniffed out the stench of fear and discovered the fragile boy hidden behind his dad.” Nora’s partner-in-crime – in the end, she must seek revenge for the past – is Marko, a taxi driver who has just about hung on to his own humanity after having been a dazed participant in barbarism.
The city is never named in the book, but reviews such as this one in The Modern Novel state that it is Vukovar. In any case, “once a city has been ravaged and levelled, nothing can bring it back to life.”
The author seems to write from her gut. This is clearly no formula-based work, with an inciting incident, climax, and resolution. There is a complex web of inciting incidents, and in the end, there cannot be a neat resolution, let alone a happy one. This makes sense. As Nora Kirin reflects, “(everything) was linked to everything else.”
This interview with Asymptote Journal explains how Ivana Bodrožić has become unpopular in her homeland because of her non-partisan writing: “Writing about ‘our sins’ is much more threatening and complex.” There is more about what makes Bodrožić’s writing powerful in this World Literature Today article, which also explains the origins of the title.
This is a rare, genre-defying work that goes beyond labels like ‘dark’. I know nothing about the Yugoslav Wars, but I got a sense that this work does justice to how complex things were and are. I listed to the audio book narrated by Xe Sands, based on Ellen Elias-Bursać’s translation.
May 18, 2022
Mene je ova knjiga oduševila! Ima mi glavu i rep i fantastičan mi je obrat na kraju knjige. Odlično ocrtava društvo u kojem se događa radnja te otkriva bolne pozadine likova koje se kasnije isprepleću. Još jedna priča o boli i osudi male sredine, nepotizmu, te kako moćnici vladaju. Realno i surovo.
April 12, 2021
via my blog: https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/
"𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐜𝐚𝐧’𝐭 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐨𝐫 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞,” 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐢𝐝.
War, displacement, emigration, ethnic cleansing… Vukovar, a city in Croatia, saw one of the biggest battles since 1945 in Europe with the siege by the (JNA) with support by paramilitary from Serbia. Croatian soldiers and citizens were outnumbered but defended against the Serbians, the battle was bloody and ended in people being killed or thrown out of Vukovar. You can go further back in history with the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, the tensions didn’t simply begin with the Yugoslav Wars. Ivana Bodrožić was born in Vukovar, lived there until her own father disappeared then she and her family moved to a refugee hotel in Kumrovec. Though this is a fictional story of an unnamed city, the events within are based on actual historical events that touched the author’s own life. I asked my father, who escaped his homeland of Hungary as a young child during communist occupation, a lot of questions about the creation and history of Yugoslavia. He knows a lot more than me about the division between people there than I can even comprehend. This novel deals with the aftermath from nationalism and those who wanted independence, the splitting apart of Yugoslavia and how it effected the next generation. It is what remains after children grew up segregated, Serbian and Croatian, what happened during ‘peaceful reintegration’ when the rubble was cleared away and what clearly remains are the ruins within the hearts and souls of the people. Can you simply unite after the bones of your family has been cleared away? People long for a reckoning after every horror and humiliation has been committed against them and their loved ones. The anger stays after being expelled, imprisoned… What happens to rumored criminal networks? When “gangsters gain legal footing” for their businesses? Money, blood, and power. The people were left to suffer from political and economical damage long after the war ended.
In the middle, always, are the children trying to move forward into a future where division has been set by the adults. Dejan is a perfect example of cultural identity and who you claim allegiance to.
Nora Kirin is a journalist chasing a story, and a juicy one at that, at least for those hungry for tabloid fodder. It began with a sordid affair that ended in a murder, but it is a political fire too. Kristiana is a Croatian- language teacher at the general and vocational high school working with ethnic Serbian students. Her Croat husband Ante (a war veteran, formerly in a prison camp) has been murdered by her lover, seventeen-year-old Dejan. Dejan is a Serbian, whose Grandfather was one of the Chetnik leaders. The salacious story is already making the rounds, a woman seducing a teen to kill for her, “one of theirs”. Nora would far rather expose the system, like the dirty Mayor but is resolved to do her best with her current assignment. What she wants is to tell the woman’s (now a prisoner) side of the story, not just continue to smear her. Her work and this city is taking her back to the past, remembering what she’d rather forget, like the disappearing children from her heavy youth. She must seek out people to interview, despite her discomfort moving through the city streets and every memory it evokes. In interviewing the victim mother, one can grasp the sentiment behind “one of ours” and “one of theirs” that isn’t erased, despite the push for unity, integration. When the war ended, new battles would eventually ensue amongst the people, often through political manipulations , of course. Children of all ages are divided at daycare and school by fencing, Serbs one side Croats on the other. Brigita is the high school principal with bigger ambitions also tied to Kristina’s story, the corrupt mayor and bribery. There are singers who ‘toy with politics’, a PTA president who is a ‘self-appointed guardian of ethnic identity’, a friendly taxi driver Marko-whose story about life in the city during the war engages Nora, a philosophical poet, and many people who have dabbled in the war with no “proof” of any crimes committed. Those in power do not take kindly to being publicly disgraced. The love triangle murder she is covering may well become an “interethnic conflict”. But it is the pursuit of truth, for her father, she is most concerned with.
This is a place where their entire world, for all the people involved, has collapsed even down to their very language. Nora is warned to stay away from dangerous men, who destroy everything, but she has to know why her father was murdered, who did it, regardless of her own well being. Not even the light of blossoming love can stop her from getting justice. What she doesn’t know is so much worse than she can imagine. Everyone is strangely intertwined. A turn of fate, helping someone can lead to more suffering. Unimaginable suffering. “Everything is linked to everything else,” even things that seem inconsequential and so much of it is a part of the war.
You have to pay attention, there are connections you will miss if you don’t read closely. It might help you to research about the wars in the 1990’s in what was once Yugoslavia. Some wanted to keep it a country, others wished to become separate countries. Reading different sides is truly only going to give you a basic understanding as an outsider. The line I quoted is brilliant too, ‘you can’t open the door from the inside’, because it’s hard to comprehend war at all, or even ourselves and everything that happens when we are in the midst of it. Those who are in the war have far more experience, but may not necessarily be able to make much sense of it either. A whole generation can be destroyed by bloodshed. Childhood, community, family, innocence, the future- all of it swept from beneath your feet. War makes prisoners of us all. Yet there are still things worth fighting for, aren’t there? For Nora at least.
Publication Date: April 20, 2021
Seven Stories Press
"𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐜𝐚𝐧’𝐭 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐨𝐫 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞,” 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐢𝐝.
War, displacement, emigration, ethnic cleansing… Vukovar, a city in Croatia, saw one of the biggest battles since 1945 in Europe with the siege by the (JNA) with support by paramilitary from Serbia. Croatian soldiers and citizens were outnumbered but defended against the Serbians, the battle was bloody and ended in people being killed or thrown out of Vukovar. You can go further back in history with the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, the tensions didn’t simply begin with the Yugoslav Wars. Ivana Bodrožić was born in Vukovar, lived there until her own father disappeared then she and her family moved to a refugee hotel in Kumrovec. Though this is a fictional story of an unnamed city, the events within are based on actual historical events that touched the author’s own life. I asked my father, who escaped his homeland of Hungary as a young child during communist occupation, a lot of questions about the creation and history of Yugoslavia. He knows a lot more than me about the division between people there than I can even comprehend. This novel deals with the aftermath from nationalism and those who wanted independence, the splitting apart of Yugoslavia and how it effected the next generation. It is what remains after children grew up segregated, Serbian and Croatian, what happened during ‘peaceful reintegration’ when the rubble was cleared away and what clearly remains are the ruins within the hearts and souls of the people. Can you simply unite after the bones of your family has been cleared away? People long for a reckoning after every horror and humiliation has been committed against them and their loved ones. The anger stays after being expelled, imprisoned… What happens to rumored criminal networks? When “gangsters gain legal footing” for their businesses? Money, blood, and power. The people were left to suffer from political and economical damage long after the war ended.
In the middle, always, are the children trying to move forward into a future where division has been set by the adults. Dejan is a perfect example of cultural identity and who you claim allegiance to.
Nora Kirin is a journalist chasing a story, and a juicy one at that, at least for those hungry for tabloid fodder. It began with a sordid affair that ended in a murder, but it is a political fire too. Kristiana is a Croatian- language teacher at the general and vocational high school working with ethnic Serbian students. Her Croat husband Ante (a war veteran, formerly in a prison camp) has been murdered by her lover, seventeen-year-old Dejan. Dejan is a Serbian, whose Grandfather was one of the Chetnik leaders. The salacious story is already making the rounds, a woman seducing a teen to kill for her, “one of theirs”. Nora would far rather expose the system, like the dirty Mayor but is resolved to do her best with her current assignment. What she wants is to tell the woman’s (now a prisoner) side of the story, not just continue to smear her. Her work and this city is taking her back to the past, remembering what she’d rather forget, like the disappearing children from her heavy youth. She must seek out people to interview, despite her discomfort moving through the city streets and every memory it evokes. In interviewing the victim mother, one can grasp the sentiment behind “one of ours” and “one of theirs” that isn’t erased, despite the push for unity, integration. When the war ended, new battles would eventually ensue amongst the people, often through political manipulations , of course. Children of all ages are divided at daycare and school by fencing, Serbs one side Croats on the other. Brigita is the high school principal with bigger ambitions also tied to Kristina’s story, the corrupt mayor and bribery. There are singers who ‘toy with politics’, a PTA president who is a ‘self-appointed guardian of ethnic identity’, a friendly taxi driver Marko-whose story about life in the city during the war engages Nora, a philosophical poet, and many people who have dabbled in the war with no “proof” of any crimes committed. Those in power do not take kindly to being publicly disgraced. The love triangle murder she is covering may well become an “interethnic conflict”. But it is the pursuit of truth, for her father, she is most concerned with.
This is a place where their entire world, for all the people involved, has collapsed even down to their very language. Nora is warned to stay away from dangerous men, who destroy everything, but she has to know why her father was murdered, who did it, regardless of her own well being. Not even the light of blossoming love can stop her from getting justice. What she doesn’t know is so much worse than she can imagine. Everyone is strangely intertwined. A turn of fate, helping someone can lead to more suffering. Unimaginable suffering. “Everything is linked to everything else,” even things that seem inconsequential and so much of it is a part of the war.
You have to pay attention, there are connections you will miss if you don’t read closely. It might help you to research about the wars in the 1990’s in what was once Yugoslavia. Some wanted to keep it a country, others wished to become separate countries. Reading different sides is truly only going to give you a basic understanding as an outsider. The line I quoted is brilliant too, ‘you can’t open the door from the inside’, because it’s hard to comprehend war at all, or even ourselves and everything that happens when we are in the midst of it. Those who are in the war have far more experience, but may not necessarily be able to make much sense of it either. A whole generation can be destroyed by bloodshed. Childhood, community, family, innocence, the future- all of it swept from beneath your feet. War makes prisoners of us all. Yet there are still things worth fighting for, aren’t there? For Nora at least.
Publication Date: April 20, 2021
Seven Stories Press
July 14, 2025
I wanted to read something set in Croatia or by Croatian author while I’m here so… and it was short and semi-interesting, but I wouldn’t really recommend it… I guess I learned some things tho. still trying to get out of the post MBF reading slump
August 19, 2023
Very moving. And DARK.
June 28, 2021
Though referred to simply as 'the City' this powerful novel is set in Vukovar, in the east of Croatia, just across the Danube from Serbia. In the 1990s the Balkan War was at its most fierce here. There were several massacres. Three trials have since taken place, two of which were not completed due to the deaths of the defendants.
Many local Croat people moved away in the early 1990s, but returned after the war. Schools are still segregated, as is much of the city.
A journalist, from out of town, is assigned to write an article on the perpetrator of a crime of passion, a Croatian high school teacher who fell in love with one of her students, a Serb, and is now in prison for having murdered her husband. But, in visiting the City, she has an ulterior motive.
This is a tragic and atmospheric novel that brings home just how recently the Balkan War took place, and how long it will take to heel.
It is set in 2011, just as bilingual signage has been requested for public buildings; the very people in charge being the same people who participated in war crimes in the 90’s - corrupt politicians, surviving mobsters and warlords who, almost twenty years later, are now members of the local political and social elite.
This is a very bold piece of writing which will shock much of the wider world in what it exposes. It is also very readable, written as a thriller with a set of diverse and completely believable characters.
Many local Croat people moved away in the early 1990s, but returned after the war. Schools are still segregated, as is much of the city.
A journalist, from out of town, is assigned to write an article on the perpetrator of a crime of passion, a Croatian high school teacher who fell in love with one of her students, a Serb, and is now in prison for having murdered her husband. But, in visiting the City, she has an ulterior motive.
This is a tragic and atmospheric novel that brings home just how recently the Balkan War took place, and how long it will take to heel.
It is set in 2011, just as bilingual signage has been requested for public buildings; the very people in charge being the same people who participated in war crimes in the 90’s - corrupt politicians, surviving mobsters and warlords who, almost twenty years later, are now members of the local political and social elite.
This is a very bold piece of writing which will shock much of the wider world in what it exposes. It is also very readable, written as a thriller with a set of diverse and completely believable characters.
December 5, 2017
Jedini problem ove knjige leži u činjenici da je objavljena u vrijeme kad nam je svima već preko glave i ustaša i četnika i tog nikad završenog rata...
Ako to zanemarimo, izvanredan pripovjedački stil.
Ako to zanemarimo, izvanredan pripovjedački stil.
July 25, 2016
Nakon Matanićeva Zvizdana, i ova knjiga budi nadu da u Hrvatskoj postoje LJUDI u pravom smislu te riječi......
July 17, 2018
Sumorno. I ne mogu opravdati to korištenje stvarnih osoba za likove...
October 23, 2021
you're welcome.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...
June 28, 2023
(2,5) I really love how Ivana Bodrožić writes but tbh,,,this book really felt like it was missing some sense of structure? Also the ending just wasn’t satisfying to me haha.
October 7, 2024
2nd half is great
July 28, 2021
How many ways can people be corrupt and cruel to each other. How many ways can a war whose fundamental purposes have disappeared and evaporated continue on its own momentum and accelerate the horrors and the cruelty. It's an awful story and exceptionally well told. Beyond bleak.
https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-...
https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-...
February 5, 2022
"the city" is never explicitly named in this slow-burning political thriller, and Nora's story set in Vukovar puts up a mirror and shines light on the ugliest parts of our microcosms and lived realities in the ex-Yu setting.
Bodrožić masterfully constructs a city that holds the very essence of our pain and she forces us to face the inflicted wound we have all been putting our own bandaids on- soaked in collective illusion of "truth" on all sides of our shared hell.
In naming and exposing war profiteers, corruption, dirty schemes and so much more- this book captures the bleak, grim reality many of us have lived in such a poetic and utterly disarming way.
"Rupa" [a hole/ a ditch - name of the original text] is an angry scream holding all the little truths we sweep under the rug, the unspeakable. Reading it certainly feels like being stuck in a ditch, it also feels like walking on quicksand. It nearly ate me alive, but I fell in love with it too.
Bodrožić masterfully constructs a city that holds the very essence of our pain and she forces us to face the inflicted wound we have all been putting our own bandaids on- soaked in collective illusion of "truth" on all sides of our shared hell.
In naming and exposing war profiteers, corruption, dirty schemes and so much more- this book captures the bleak, grim reality many of us have lived in such a poetic and utterly disarming way.
"Rupa" [a hole/ a ditch - name of the original text] is an angry scream holding all the little truths we sweep under the rug, the unspeakable. Reading it certainly feels like being stuck in a ditch, it also feels like walking on quicksand. It nearly ate me alive, but I fell in love with it too.
November 20, 2016
Izvrsna autorica, u vrhu suvremene hrvatske književnosti. Iako je ovaj roman mogao ostati samo običan krimić, on je puno više: komentar na depresivnu hrvatsku zbilju i ljudsku narav uopće.
September 1, 2022
Mračno i depresivno, nažalost i djelomično neuvjerljivo.
August 19, 2021
Sent on a small assignment to cover the murder by a wife of a husband, because of her involvement with a student, journalist Nora Kirin is quickly immersed in racial Croat–Serbian tensions that have been covered over (but still exist) in two decades since 1991 massacre of Croats by Serbs.
The author draws a cynical (but perhaps true) picture of current politics, where those that committed atrocities are still in power, and thrive on those tensions to gain more power.
The simple assignment brings back Nora’s personal loss from her father’s assassination before the massacre. As Nora becomes more enmeshed in those tensions, she makes a choice between living and forgetting the past, and avenge the death of her father.
While the setting for the story is full of conflict, either the author’s style or the translation did not engage me, and more often, especially in the first half of the book, I was confused (there may be too much local context and history that the author assumes the reader has). Furthermore, since I wasn’t engaged, I did not understand the choice as Nora’s only alternatives.
As the translator’s notes indicate, the story extends the tragedy of decades ago to those still alive. A value of the book is shedding light on the tragedy of Vukovar (the unnamed Croatian city of the novel), then and now.
FB. Set in a place where underlying conflict simmers, journalist Nora Kirin is drawn into her past history that leads to a choice of life or revenge. The spare writing often left me without sufficient context to engage in the story.
The overall rating is more like 3.5. Good setting, interesting time epoch; assumes context of time and strive.
The author draws a cynical (but perhaps true) picture of current politics, where those that committed atrocities are still in power, and thrive on those tensions to gain more power.
The simple assignment brings back Nora’s personal loss from her father’s assassination before the massacre. As Nora becomes more enmeshed in those tensions, she makes a choice between living and forgetting the past, and avenge the death of her father.
While the setting for the story is full of conflict, either the author’s style or the translation did not engage me, and more often, especially in the first half of the book, I was confused (there may be too much local context and history that the author assumes the reader has). Furthermore, since I wasn’t engaged, I did not understand the choice as Nora’s only alternatives.
As the translator’s notes indicate, the story extends the tragedy of decades ago to those still alive. A value of the book is shedding light on the tragedy of Vukovar (the unnamed Croatian city of the novel), then and now.
FB. Set in a place where underlying conflict simmers, journalist Nora Kirin is drawn into her past history that leads to a choice of life or revenge. The spare writing often left me without sufficient context to engage in the story.
The overall rating is more like 3.5. Good setting, interesting time epoch; assumes context of time and strive.
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November 12, 2024A grim and powerful political thriller and literary mystery set in ex-Yugoslavian Croatia in 2010, with flashbacks to the civil wars of the 90s. Nora, a journalist is sent to cover a melodramatic murder story and uncovers a mesh of violence and corruption and collusion. The many operators and innocents she encounters are vividly drawn and proclaim a dark, stark dire warning.
[Nora & her widowed mother]"They each managed by living in what each could handle; too great an intimacy would have undercut the monotony of their everyday lives, and losing the monotony would have made things unbearable."
p. 39/125
[Marko] "' Here in the city as nowhere else own the world. There aren't two sides. You're either with them on the inside or you're out, and then you're outside of everything. Alone mostly. The political parties here are merely the illusion which has reached the point of seeming to be real. And that's why all of this is as it is." p. 56/125
"All this will pass drummed in his head. What mattered was to feel nothing, and if he did geel something, to do nothing, because all this will pass, regardless." p.91/125
[Nora & her widowed mother]"They each managed by living in what each could handle; too great an intimacy would have undercut the monotony of their everyday lives, and losing the monotony would have made things unbearable."
p. 39/125
[Marko] "' Here in the city as nowhere else own the world. There aren't two sides. You're either with them on the inside or you're out, and then you're outside of everything. Alone mostly. The political parties here are merely the illusion which has reached the point of seeming to be real. And that's why all of this is as it is." p. 56/125
"All this will pass drummed in his head. What mattered was to feel nothing, and if he did geel something, to do nothing, because all this will pass, regardless." p.91/125
July 26, 2024
I almost feel I have no right to comment on this book, not having lived through the events in it. I was aware of them and my husband worked with a woman who left her home country because of the war there. This is technically a work of fiction, but I often feel I find more truth in fiction than anywhere else.
The book takes place after the Serbian/Croatian conflict and is about the effects on those on either side who were there. It's about politics and divisiveness and how someone always benefits from the misery of others. It's about "peaceful" reunification and scars and the politicization of everything.
I recommend this book about being human and being damaged. It feels very real and very personal and if you're in touch with the state of the world, you will be touched by this book in some way.
The book takes place after the Serbian/Croatian conflict and is about the effects on those on either side who were there. It's about politics and divisiveness and how someone always benefits from the misery of others. It's about "peaceful" reunification and scars and the politicization of everything.
I recommend this book about being human and being damaged. It feels very real and very personal and if you're in touch with the state of the world, you will be touched by this book in some way.
June 21, 2025
Sličnost sa stvarnošću u romanu def nije slučajna, ali granica između te “stvarne” stvarnosti i romanskog svijeta koji postepeno gradi kroz priču na trenutke se čini nejasnima. Strogo žanrovski gledano, ovo je jedan kroz jedan krimić, u neku ruku i politički triler, ali s karakterom balkanskog noira koji ilustrira međuljudske odnose u postkonfliktnim zajednicama…
“Sve će ona to moći, ionako više ništa nema niti joj išta treba. Bila je spremna pomiriti se sa svime, ništa više nije bilo strašno, osim možda jednog: najstrašnije od svega je kad shvatiš da vrata s unutrašnje strane nemaju bravu.”
“Sve će ona to moći, ionako više ništa nema niti joj išta treba. Bila je spremna pomiriti se sa svime, ništa više nije bilo strašno, osim možda jednog: najstrašnije od svega je kad shvatiš da vrata s unutrašnje strane nemaju bravu.”
January 12, 2022
Dura novela negra ambientada en Vukovar, que me ha dejado todo tipo de interrogantes al dejarme patente que no sé nada sobre la guerra de los Balcanes ni tampoco de cómo conviven ahora el torturado con su torturador o el huérfano con los asesinos de su familia. No sabía ni siquiera que la educación allí está segregada y se educa separadamente a niños croatas y serbios siguiendo dos currículos distintos.
August 20, 2025
Honestly I picked this book up because I wanted to read a mystery/drama. I was intrigued by the teacher/student relationship scandal and the reporter/main character going to the prison to interview the teacher but the book didn’t really stick to that and deviated from it. The ending was wild though, not gonna lie. But for the most part it was kind of dry. I felt it went too too much into history that didn’t need to be in there. Or maybe I just didn’t think it was relevant.
January 4, 2022
It is a mystery that isn't really about who did it although it still carries some of that genres propulsion every couple of pages a sentence grabbed hold and wouldn't let go. The end felt inevitable after I read it but only then did I accept that is where the story had to go. Excellent at creating a mood and describing a world with out bogging you down.
November 10, 2025
Beautifully written and translated, nuanced, and poignant— one of the better novels I’ve read this year. The narration style kept me on my toes, but I’m not mad about it. As much as ever, it’s a good time to be reminded of the complexities of standing on either side of a fence, of a war, or of a shared trauma of our own creation.
December 6, 2022
This book was a bit hard to digest. It's setting is very historically and politically based, which may interest some but is not my cup of tea. The ending also felt very rushed, and the so-called "twist" was weak.
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