Ivan Sršen (b. 1979) holds a degree in History and Linguistics from the University of Zagreb. He worked in multiple publishing houses before co-founding his own publishing company, Sandorf, in 2008. He’s authored the novel Harmatten (2013), a collection of short stories Skela, bajke iz automata za kavu (2010) (Fairytales from the Coffee Machine), co-authored a nonfiction book, Povijest zagrebačkih knjižnica (2010) (The History of Zagreb’s Libraries) and edited the collection of short stories, Zagreb Noir (2015). He lives and works in Zagreb.
Zagreb, Croatia’s capital city, faced one of the biggest challenges in its 1000 year history on March 22nd, 2020. In the midst of a global pandemic, a 5.5 Richter earthquake struck the city of one million inhabitants. Ivan Sršen shares his personal experience of being at the center of dual disasters.
Tomislav Medak (b. 1973) holds a degree in Philosophy and German Studies from the University of Zagreb. He is currently a doctoral student at Coventry University in the Centre for Postdigital Cultures. Medak is the author of two books: A Guidebook to Domination by Abstraction (2016) and Shitty Tech for a Shitty World (2015). He has co-authored several other books and edited volumes. Medak has organized and participated in multiple conferences and talks with themes ranging from political theory to the commons to cultural policy over the last twenty years. He is also very active in the experimental theatre group BADco. as an actor, playwright, and director.
In his post on the convergence of two rare disastrous events in Zagreb (last week’s strong earthquake and Coronavirus), Tomislav Medak paints a jarring picture of Zagreb residents huddling outside in the cold after being quite literally shaken awake and at the same time their world is crumbling around them trying to observe social distancing so as not to reap the wrath of the current invisible threat that is Coronavirus. He challenges readers to observe how disaster preparedness and government response to disasters reveals attitudes about the collective good and asks readers to use these events as a catalyst for rethinking society’s relationship to the market.
Just days before Croatia’s incredible performance in the 2018 World Cup, the sixth annual edition of the Croatian Litlink Festival brought together authors and publishers for a literary road trip that included readings in the cities of Pula, Rijeka, and Zagreb. Past guests have included Heidi Julavits, Sheila Heti, Tao Lin, and David Szalay. This year’s participants mostly came from the US and included Nell Zink, Catherine Lacey, Jesse Ball, Elijah Wald, Ashley Nelson Levy, Peter Blackstock, Janika Rüter, Buzz Poole, Olivia Snaije...
The spread of influence from Serbian Repetitor to Croatian Vlasta Popić helped solidify Moonlee’s reputation as a regional scenebuilder (local scenes in Zagreb and Belgrade continue to thrive, with the shoegazey Žen and dreampop Bitipatibi among the standouts).
Ščapec’s Zagreb-based Vlasta Popić emerged in 2011. They won fans in both Jarboli and Repetitor, with Jarboli’s Mladenović recording their first album. The group’s second record, Kvadrat (“Square”), is one the best examples of Moonlee’s output and probably one of the greatest rock records put out by anyone in 2015.
By: Tom Nash
The curation of a festival of literature naturally entails the “curation” of its participants. Lit Link excelled in this regard – the authors invited from the UK represented a very fine, accomplished tranche of contemporary British writing, and the publishers, for the most part, represented a scrappy, independent ethos and pride in advancing thought-provoking fiction and literary fiction in translation.
The medieval city in Croatia is having a geek-culture moment as the setting for King’s Landing in the HBO series “Game of Thrones”.
Hollywood seems to have discovered Dubrovnik. Parts of The Last Jedi, the eighth episode in the Star Wars saga, also take place in the fortress town. Filming wrapped this year on a new Robin Hood film starring Taron Eagerton, Jamie Foxx, and Jamie Dornan (and produced by Leonard DiCaprio). The 25th James Bond film is reported to begin shooting in the city in January 2018.
But not everyone appreciates all the attention.
As far as I know, LitLink festival is unique. Each year it takes a group of writers and publishers to three Croatian cities – Pula, Rijeka, and Zagreb – for a series of evening readings. Along the way there are coach journeys on winding roads, stunning vistas of deep green fields and icy mountains, excellent Croatian wine and food, sea swimming, plenty of book chat...
Each night there is a bilingual Croatian-English event. Translations are projected behind the writers as they read. It becomes apparent that many contemporary Croatian writers are high ironists, forging dark comedy from aspects of life that most disturb them – war, corruption, the riotous hypocrisy of those who claim to govern us.
The tour runs from Zagreb to Pula to Rijeka...
From the 2017 LITLINK FESTIVAL in CROATIA
The success of the three-day-LitLinking of Europeans, sharing our literatures and languages, proves beyond measure that the sun still shines and the stars still twinkle ‘Despite Brexit’.
It’s very easy to be positive about Europe here in Croatia, when the sky and sea are turquoise blue, the sun is hot and bouncing off the white stone walls, and when you are surrounded by superb writers, publishers and editors from the UK and Croatia, excelling through their luminous prose, wit and warmth. The author Robert Perišić and author-publisher Ivan Sršen have been running the Croatian LitLink Roadshow for five years, inviting equal numbers of writers from Croatia and A Guest Country (this year, poor Blighted Britain) to travel together round the country, to debate, walk, eat, drink and hold public readings in unusual venues.
"It’s called Rijecki Novi Val. (Novi Val is Croatian for New Wave.) This is one of the best collections of anything I ever acquired. Punk and New Wave were huge in the Balkans. I said it once, and I’ll say it again: the ex-YU countries are responsible for the some of the best punk music made anywhere."
The second edition of the "Lit Link" literary festival will take place in Pula, Rijeka and Zagreb on August 28-30, bringing together US, Canadian, British and Croatian authors and editors to promote Croatian literature abroad and foreign literature in Croatia.
The foreign guests will include authors Adam Mansbach, Miriam Toews, Sheila Heti, Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall and Kathryn Borel, editor Anne Meadows, author and editor Buzz Poole, editor Dan Simon, editor Zeljka Marosevic, editor Andi Winnette, and author, journalist and editor Michael Stein.
The Croatian authors to attend the event are Željka Horvat Čeč, Maša Kolanović, Ivana Kovačić, Enver Krivac, Davor Mandić, Robert Međurečan, Marko Pogačar, Ivana Simić Bodrožić, Dalibor Šimpraga, Bojan Žižović, Jasna Žmak and Zoran Žmiric.
Srećko Horvat
theguardian.com, Thursday 22 May 2014
People from across the former Yugoslavia were helping one another, but their governments enabled the tragedy
James Hopkin
The Guardian, Monday 1 July 2013
Contemporary Croatian literature, in particular, is fast gaining recognition. Josip Novakovich was recently shortlisted for the Man Booker international prize, as was Daša Drndić for the Independent foreign fiction prize. Then there's Robert Perišić, Slavenka Drakulić, and Zoran Ferić.
Zagreb is crammed with cultural sites, including the impressive new Museum of Contemporary Art, and in spring and autumn the city is alive with weekly festivals such as the Subversive film festival (this year speakers included Oliver Stone and Slavoj Žižek).
Natasa Radic, Independent Balkan News Agency, 03/05/2013
At the recently held Noir Festival, which hosts the world’s writer stars that dominate the global top bestseller lists, one author had an extraordinary huge audience in Zagreb Kaptol Center, where the literary critic Mima Simic had a public interview with him. His name is Jo Nesbo, Norwegian crime novel writer, whose novel “The Snowman” has been sold out in Croatia. Perhaps the secret relationship between the famous Norwegian and readers in Croatia can be found in the fact that in his novel “The Savior” main character is a Vukovar defender during the Homeland war.
Contemporary Croatian Literature at Keats House
Robert Perišić in conversation with Will Firth
Josip Novakovich in conversation with Marinko Koščec
An unofficial report from the Festival of the European Short Story in Zagreb and Pazin - by James Hopkin (Literature Across Frontiers), writer from Manchester.
"And this is the wonderful thing about the festival thus far: the opportunity for the writers and organisers to discuss each other’s work, the short story as form, in unhurried surroundings, unlike UK festivals where the writer is shipped in and out with the minimum of fuss or contact, and you usually don’t have the time or the opportunity to sit down with other writers. Here it is different."
Croatia is a small, charming country known today as a prime European tourist destination. However, it has a complicated often turbulent history and is seemingly always destined to be at the crossroads of empires, religions and worldviews, with its current identity and culture incorporating elements from its former Communist, Slavic, Austrian-Hungarian, Catholic, Mediterranean, and European traditions.
Dubravka Ugrešić is one of the most internationally recognizable writers from Croatia, but she has a contentious relationship with her home country, having gone into self-exile in the early 90s. Her recently translated collection of essays, The Age of Skin, touches on topics of of exile and displacement, among others. Read a review of Ugrešić’s latest work of non-fiction, expertly translated by Ellen Elias-Bursac, in the link below .
Vlaho Bukovac (1855-1922) is arguably Croatia's most renowned painter. Born in the south in Cavtat, he spent some of his most impressionable teenage years in New York with his uncle and his first career was as a sailor, but he soon gave that up due to injury. He went on to receive an education in the fine arts in Paris and began his artistic career there. He lived at various times in New York, San Francisco, Peru, Paris, Cavtat, Zagreb and Prague. His painting style could be classified as Impressionism which incorporated various techniques such as pointilism.
An exhibition dedicated to the works of Vlaho Bukovac will be running in Klovićevi dvori Gallery in Gornji Grad, Zagreb through May 22nd, 2022.
Read a review of Neva Lukić's collection of short stories, Endless Endings, recently translated into English, in World Literature Today.
Zagreb has its fair share of graffiti, often startling passersby when it pops up on say a crumbling fortress wall in the historical center of the city. Along with some well-known street murals are the legendary street artists themselves. Check out the article below for a definitive guide to Zagreb's best street art.
The colorful, eclectic and much beloved Croatian children's cartoon Professor Balthazar was created by Zlatko Grgić and produced from the late 1960s through the 1970s. Now newer generations will be able to enjoy the Professor's magic, whether they speak Croatian or English.
Robert Prosinečki's long and fabled football career includes winning third place in the 1998 World Cup as part of the Croatian national team, stints in Real Madrid and FC Barcelona as well as managerial roles for the Croatian national team, Red Star Belgrade, the Azerbaijani national team and the Bosnian Hercegovinian national team.
Croatian publishing house Sandorf launched their American branch called Sandorf Passage earlier this year.
From strange tales of mysterious murders to suspected criminals hiding out to scams, duels and gambling, Opatija, a favourite seaside escape for Central Europeans at the turn of the last century, routinely filled Austrian headlines and the public's imagination in the early 20th century.
Hailed as the father of 20th century Croatian children's literature, Grigor Vitez (1911-1966) is well known and loved in his homeland. With a new English translation of one of his classic tales AntonTon (AntunTun in Croatian), children around the world can now experience the author's delightful depiction of the strong-minded and silly AntonTon. The Grigor Vitez Award is an annual prize given to the best Croatian children's book of the year.
Have an overabundance of free time, thanks to the pandemic and lockdowns? Yearning to travel but unable to do so safely? Discover the rhythm of life and thought in multiple Eastern European countries through exciting new literature translated into English. From war-torn Ukraine to tales from Gulag inmates to the search for identity by Eastern Europeans driven away from their home countries because of the economic or political situations but still drawn back to their cultural hearths, this list offers many new worlds to explore.
Explore TimeOut's gallery of fascinating and at times thought-provoking art in the great open air gallery of the streets of Zagreb.
Partied too hard last night? Drop by Zagreb's Hangover Museum to feel more normal. People share their craziest hangover stories and visitors can even try on beer goggles to experience how the world looks like through drunken eyes.
How will the futuristic world of 2060 look? How far will technology have advanced, and how will those advancements affect how we live our everyday lives? These are the questions the Zagreb-based magazine Globus asked in a series of articles in 1960, when conceptualizing what advancements society would make 40 years in the future, the then far-off year of 2000. The articles used fantastical predictions about the future to highlight the technological advancements already made by the then socialist Yugoslavia. Take a trip with guide, Jonathan Bousfield, back to the future as envisioned by journalists in 1960s Yugoslavia.
What’s the best way for an open-minded foreigner to get straight to the heart of another culture and get a feel for what makes people tick? Don’t just sample the local food and drink and see the major sights, perk up your ears and listen. There’s nothing that gives away the local flavor of a culture more than the common phrases people use, especially ones that have no direct translation.
Check out a quirky list of untranslatable Croatian phrases from Croatian cultural guide extraordinaire, Andrea Pisac, in the link below:
Just got out of a serious relationship and don't know what to do with all those keepsakes and mementos of your former loved one? The very popular and probably most unique museum in Zagreb, the Museum of Broken Relationships, dedicated to preserving keepsakes alongside the diverse stories of relationships gone wrong, will gladly take them. Find out how the museum got started and take an in-depth look at some of its quirkiest pieces in the link below.
Zagreb is Croatia’s relaxed, charming and pedestrian-friendly capital. Check out Time Out’s definitive Zagreb guide for a diverse set of options of what to explore in the city from unusual museums to legendary flea markets and everything in between.
Diocletian’s Palace is the main attraction in Split, the heart and soul of the city. Because of the palace, Split’s city center can be described as a living museum and it draws in the thousands of tourists that visit the city annually. But how much do we really know about the palace’s namesake who built it, the last ruler of a receding empire? Jonathan Bousfield contends that history only gives us a partial answer.
Cities have served as sources of inspiration, frustration, and discovery for millennia. The subject of sonnets, stories, plays, the power centers of entire cultures, hotbeds of innovation, and the cause of wars, cities are mainstays of the present and the future with millions more people flocking to them every year.
Let the poet, Zagreb native Tomica Bajsić, take you on a lyrical tour of the city. Walk the streets conjured by his graceful words and take in the gentle beauty of the Zagreb of his childhood memories and present day observation.
Dolac, the main city market, is a Zagreb institution. Selling all the fresh ingredients you need to whip up a fabulous dinner, from fruits and vegetables to fish, meat and homemade cheese and sausages, the sellers come from all over Croatia. Positioned right above the main square, the colorful market is a beacon of a simpler way of life and is just as bustling as it was a century ago.
Do you find phrases and sayings give personality and flair to a language? Have you ever pondered how the culture and history of a place shape the common phrases? Check out some common sayings in Croatian with their literal translations and actual meanings below.
Discover Croatia’s rich archaeological secrets, from the well known ancient Roman city of Salona near Split or the Neanderthal museum in Krapina to the often overlooked Andautonia Archaeological Park, just outside of Zagreb, which boasts the excavated ruins of a Roman town or the oldest continuously inhabited town in Europe, Vinkovci.
A little know fact is that Croatia, together with Spain, have the most cultural and historical heritage under the protection of UNESCO, and Croatia has the highest number of UNESCO intangible goods of any European country.
The National Theater in Zagreb, Croatia’s capital, is one of those things which always finds its way to every visitor’s busy schedule.
So you're visiting Zagreb and are curious about it's underground art scene? Check out this guide to Zagreb's street art and explore all the best graffiti artists' work for yourself on your next walk through the city.
Numerous festivals, shows and exhibitions are held annually in Zagreb. Search our what's on guide to arts & entertainment.