Bosnia and Herzegovina | Bosnian | Nonfiction
May, 2020Dragan Bursać and I share a last name, though we are not, so far as I know, related. The first time I ran into his reporting was while I was working at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague and saw a piece he'd written about the tragic events that happened around the city of Prijedor, something I knew far too much about from my work at the Tribunal. His was the first article I'd seen, by a journalist from that part of Bosnia, which spoke frankly about what had happened there. I was moved to tears that someone, moreover someone with whom I shared a name, had the courage to speak of such things. Since then I have followed his writing, and he has not disappointed. In 2018, he published a collection of what he refers to as “scraps” in PTSP Spomenar (PTSD Scrapbook): brief sketches about his family, his childhood, the time he spent serving in the Republika Srpska armed forces, his grief at the current state of affairs in Bosnia. He hasn't buried his book away in the dusty corner of a library, indeed he has held some 40 well-attended book launches and readings all across Bosnia and Herzegovina--and beyond, in Zagreb, Belgrade, and Copenhagen. At his Sarajevo launch he said: “I realized that the fate of someone such as myself who suffers from PTSD is not just mine, but is the fate of an entire generation, not just within Bosnia and Herzegovina, but across the Balkans. This book is for all of us.”
- Ellen Elias-Bursać
Bosnia and Herzegovina | Bosnian | Short Fiction
June, 2014Emira Larson is a Bosnian-American who was born in Sarajevo, where she stayed during its four-year siege. An architect by training, she recently published her first book of short fiction, Šeherzada u Sarajevu (in English translation: Scheherazade in Sarajevo). She writes food and travel stories as a correspondent for Gracija magazine. Her short fiction and essays have been published in numerous literary magazines. In the last ten years, she has changed many addresses, from Kinshasa to Vienna to Podgorica.
Bosnia and Herzegovina | Bosnian | Short Fiction
April, 2014The two stories featured here were published as part of the 2001 collection Pisma iz ludnice ("Letters from the Madhouse"), whose short stories were written during the author's years as a refugee in the United States and originally published in the Bosnian-Herzegovinian weekly newspaper Slobodna Bosna. Džamonja spoke of his inability to adjust to his new life, as well as his longing for a Sarajevo that could no longer exist, making him a refugee not only in the physical sense, but also in the temporal sense.
- Aleksandar Brezar
Bosnia and Herzegovina | Bosnian | Short Fiction
July, 2013Muharem Bazdulj was born in 1977 in Travnik, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He has published several novels and short story collections, including Druga knjiga (2000), which was awarded the Book of the Year prize by Open Society Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 2005, the Northwestern University Press series Writings from an Unbound Europe published it in English translation. Bazdulj's work has been featured in international anthologies such as The Wall in My Head, published on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Best European Fiction 2012 (Dalkey Archive Press). His short stories and essays have appeared in World Literature Today, Creative Nonfiction, Habitus, and Absinthe, among other literary journals. Two of his early novels are available in German translation: Der Ungläubige und Zulejha (2008) and Transit.Komet.Eklipse (2011). He works as a journalist for the Bosnian daily Oslobođenje, and the Association of Journalists of Bosnia and Herzegovina honored him as the country's best journalist in 2012.
The Brooklyn Rail welcomes you to our web-exclusive section InTranslation, where we feature unpublished translations of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and dramatic writing. Published since April 2007, InTranslation is a venue for outstanding work in translation and a resource for translators, authors, editors, and publishers seeking to collaborate.
We seek exceptional unpublished English translations from all languages.
Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry: Manuscripts of no longer than 20 pages (double-spaced).
Plays: Manuscripts of no longer than 30 pages (in left-justified format).