“There was fascism, there was communism and the bugbears of communism. Now, there is, supposedly, none of that, and all the filth of those times has been swept under the carpet.” – from Canzone di Guerra by Daša Drndić, translated from the Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth. B O D Y’s Winter Issue rolls on with […]
Lit Link Festival will kick off its second year on August 28, holding events in three Croatian cities over three days and bringing together writers, editors and publishers from Croatia with those from Canada, the UK, the US and The Czech Republic. The Czech is possibly the least Czech person I know, namely, me, and […]
The inaugural Sofia International Literary Festival is underway in the Bulgarian capital, comprising literary participants from Bulgaria and Balkan countries from December 10 – 15. Among the many writers in attendance are Bulgaria’s Georgi Gospodinov, Kristin Dimitrova, Miroslav Penkov and Milen Ruskov; Serbia’s Vladimir Arsenijević, Macedonia’s Goce Smilevski, Croatia’s Ante Tomić and Romania’s Dan Lungu […]
“That New Year little Mensur Ćeman learned that Grandfather Frost really did exist, but that he was not the kind old man from the Coca-Cola ad bringing colorfully wrapped presents for the children—he was an infidel arsonist, and it was because of him that he now lived at his Uncle Irfan’s and had to go […]
Sunday, May 27 sees the beginning of the 2012 Festival of the European Short Story (FESS) in Zagreb. The festival has a fantastic-looking new website which unfortunately still has some kinks to work out (clicking on a link for an interview with David Albahari I arrived at a wordless page that had a photograph of […]
By Hallgrimur Helgason “Icelandic names are like Scud missiles. Their trail lingers in the air long after they’ve reached their target. Still these guys have my respect. Being a crime writer in the land of no murders can’t be easy. It seems you need the creative powers of a genius just to be able to […]
The Balkanized readership of Ivo Andric For readers of Ivo Andric who are not from the Balkans, the Nobel Prize winning writer seems far from controversial. If anything, the author of The Bridge on the Drina may seem a somewhat old-fashioned novelist, a good and colorful storyteller, ] – hardly someone who deserves an assessment […]
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