prose

Olja Savičević Ivančević: Excerpt from Singer in the Night

Olja Savičević Ivančević, born in Split in 1974, holds a degree in Croatian Language and Literature from the University of Zadar. She has written multiple volumes of poetry, a collection of short stories Nasmijati psa (2006) (To Make a Dog Laugh) and two novels, Adios, Kauboj (2011) (Adios, Cowboy) and Pjevač u Noći (2016) (Singer in the Night). Her work has been praised by critics and the public alike: she's received multiple awards for her poetry and short stories and her novel Adios, Cowboy received the prestigious tportal award for best novel of the year in 2011. Adios, Cowboy was also adapted into a play which enjoyed an excellent reception.

In her novel, Singer in the Night, the war veteran protagonist's experiences and attitudes towards war are subtly and gracefully touched upon through his present day experiences that trigger flashbacks to significant moments in his time as a soldier. The reader gets a sense of what a master storyteller Olja Savičević Ivančevic is as she skillfully blends the protagonist’s present day feelings with his contemplations on his internal state in the past in a shockingly natural way.

Read an excerpt from Olja Savičević Ivančević’s novel, Singer in the Night, below.
Translation by Celia Hawkesworth.

Singer in the Night
A novel by Olja Savičević
Translated from the Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth
Published by Istros Books
 
 

Letter From A War Veteran

Sometimes at night I hear someone making love noisily, then when I open the windows, I light a cigarette and blow smoke into the darkness. (Otherwise I keep myself well shut up, I put on the air- conditioning and the TV, any programme that happens to be on so that I am not alone.)

Sometimes I amuse myself by trying to figure out which of you, my neighbours, is kissing.

For instance, I know a charmer from this street who used to hand out call-up notices but never saw the front line himself. I hope it isn’t him. I don’t hate him now, and I despise him ever less, I only remember him when I meet him in the street or a shop and say: ‘hi.’ But still, I hope he is not the one screwing. I hope that the fact that he handed out summonses to war in his Bermudas and flip-flops makes it hard for him to get it up. That would be poetic justice, but it never happens in reality, presumably because it is poetic, and not real justice. In reality, the surviving victims get cancer or diabetes, while the criminals get a new identity and Bermuda, the odd year behind bars, perhaps, some crack up, their nerves fray, they kill themselves, or their family and then themselves, but the thing with criminals is that they mostly don’t have any nerves, not a single one, that’s why their throat-cutting goes so well, neither their voice nor their hand trembles. I don’t know what the people who hand out call-up notices get, what their bag is, but I’d like them not to get laid.

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