interview

An Interview with Igor Štiks

In an interview with acclaimed Sarajevo-born author Igor Štiks, he discusses human agency in the face of consequential historical events, which is the central conflict in his new novel, W. Štiks also touches on the parallels between the events leading up to the breakup of Yugoslavia and current European nationalist politics as well as the common linguistic legacy shared by countries of the former Yugoslavia.

interview

An Interview with Olja Savičević Ivančević

Step into the award-winning author Olja Savičević Ivančević’s world as she peels away the many layers of her hometown Split and all of Dalmatia in the interview below.

interview

An Interview with Bekim Sejranovic

Read Bekim Sejranović's thoughts on adventure, the flow of life and why Rijeka is why one of the most special places in the world to him.

interview

The Poetry of Zagreb

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.

interview

Interview with Ivana Bodrožić

Ivana Bodrožić earned great acclaim in Croatia with her debut novel, Hotel Zagorje (The Hotel Tito) (2010). Her moving, coming of age novel is also deeply personal since it is partially based on Bodrožić’s experience as a child refugee during the war in Croatia in the early 90s. Her book struck a chord internationally as well and has been translated into ten languages. Read an interview with Bodrožić below in which she discusses how the novel came about as well as her perspective on the widespread refugee crises occurring in the world today.

interview

Samantha Harvey: Dear Thief

LIT LINK FESTIVAL 2017

Samantha Harvey was born in 1975 in Kent, England. She has a master’s degree in Philosophy and an MA in Creative Writing. She won the Betty Trask prize for her first novel, The Wilderness (2009), which was also shortlisted for The Guardian First Book Award and the Orange Prize for fiction and longlisted for the Man Booker prize. Her subsequent novels, All is Song (2012) and Dear Thief (2014) also received an excellent critical reception. Dear Thief was longlisted for the 2015 Bailey’s Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the 2015 James Tate Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. Her short stories have been published in Granta magazine and appeared on BBC Radio 4.

Harvey will be reading a passage from her most recent novel, Dear Thief, and answering questions as part of the 2017 Lit Link Festival which will take place in Pula (June 29th), Rijeka (June 30th), and Zagreb (July 1st).

interview

David Szalay: All That Man Is

LIT LINK FESTIVAL 2017

David Szalay’s prose has been described by the New York Times as “…frequently brilliant, remarkable for its grace and economy.” (New York Times, October 2016). The Canadian born British author’s latest novel, All That Man Is, was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize. Szalay’s previous two novels, Spring (2011) and The Innocent (2009), were also met with critical acclaim and he was awarded the Betty Trask and Geoffrey Faber prizes for his debut novel, London and the Southeast (2008). Szalay attended Oxford University and has written radio dramas for the BBC. Granta magazine named him as one of the Best Young British Novelists in 2013.

Szalay will be reading a passage from his novel, All That Man Is, and discussing his work as a participant in this year's Lit Link Festival, which will be held in Pula (June 29th), Rijeka (June 30th) and Zagreb (July 1st).

interview

An interview with Zdenko Franjić

Starting out in 1987, Croatian record label Slusaj Najglasnije! (or Listen Loudest!) documented many of Croatia’s greatest bands, including Majke, Hali Gali Halid, Satan Panonski, Bambi Molestors, and many others. Over time, Listen Loudest! evolved, and today releases music from artists the world around. The mastermind behind Listen Loudest, Zdenko Franjic, has been kept his label/life mission together for over thirty years without a break.

interview

Croatian-German writer Jagoda Marinić: 'Cultural identity is not absolute truth'

Jagoda Marinić is a prize-winning author, novelist, playwright, essayist, journalist and the head of the International Welcome Center in Heidelberg. She was born to Croatian parents and grew up bilingually. "Spiegel" called her 2007 debut novel "Die Namenlose" one of the most important new releases of that year. In 2013 she released "Restaurant Dalmatia" to critical acclaim. "Made in Germany. Was ist deutsch in Deutschland" was released in May 2016 in German.

interview

Ernesto Estrella on The Voice Observatory

The guest of the first Lit Link Festival, held in Rijeka, Zagreb and Pula in 2013, unveils his, by all accounts, unique work of art.

interview

An interview with Damir Šodan

By poetryinternational / May 14, 2013

Poetry International, in collaboration with 3:AM Magazine, is pleased to showcase a group of amazing young European poets. Steven Fowler, the Editor of the Maintenant Interview Series, began this project in January 2010 as a result of experiencing the differing, and inspirational, attitudes of European poetic cultures and how they contrasted to the UK. He said “I really thought it was a shame that poets from outside of the English language in Europe were never recognised until they had reached middle age and a certain ‘prominence’ in their own countries. I also wanted to present a truly representative sense of what poetry is for different traditions and methodologies, from the most traditional to the most avant garde. ”

interview

The Perils of Transation, guest post by Will Firth

ANZ LitLovers, Lisa Hill, April 28, 2013

Last week in the course of my review of A Handful of Sand by Marinko Koscec, I had the pleasure of ‘meeting’ his translator in the conversation that took place in comments about the book. Will Firth is a multi-lingual Aussie translator who works in Berlin, translating Russian, Macedonian, and all variants of Serbo-Croatian. Born in 1965 in Newcastle, Australia, Will studied German and Slavic languages in Canberra, Zagreb and Moscow, and since 1991, he has been living in Berlin, where he works as a freelance translator of literature and the humanities.

interview

Under the Covers: A chat with Josip Novakovich

The George town, April 25, 2013

Josip Novakovich is a writer of short stories, essays, and novels, with many published to popular acclaim. He was recently shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize for “literary excellence… in a writer’s entire body of work.” Born in Yugoslavia in 1956, Novakovich grew up in Daruvar, in what is now central Croatia.

interview

The Normal World Believes Its Own Stability

An Interview with Robert Perišić by Steven Wingate

When your first book in the U.S. comes out with a front cover blurb from Jonathan Franzen, you’re usually in a pretty good spot. That’s where Croatian author Robert Perišić finds himself with the fine, just-released novel Our Man in Iraq, one of the first offerings from the relatively new press Black Balloon Publishing.
(The U.K. edition of the novel was published by Istros Books in 2012 and the original, Naš čovjek na terenu in Croatian, came out in 2007.)

interview

An interview with Neven Ušumović

"At the end of the 1990s, the prevailing trend in Croatian literature was neorealism: the consequences of war, the sudden impoverishment of wide sections of society, the brutality of the economic transition were foregrounded. In this decade, there is more experimentation: intermediality and crossover of genres offer particularly productive solutions for an inventive dialogue with social reality. It would please me if people outside Croatia read Robert Perišić, Zoran Ferić, Boris Dežulović and Marinko Koščec; then new writers such as Vlado Bulić and Zoran Pilić. They are characterized by harsh satire, uncompromising analysis of the social situation, and poetic inventiveness." - from dalkeyarchive.com

interview

An interview with Igor Štiks

"The nineteenth-century idea that literature could be neatly compartmentalised into 'national' literatures was always a problematic one but increasingly so in a world of intensive migration. My literary identity certainly moves beyond the linguistic limits of my language due to the Weltliteratur character of this particular art."

Interviewer: Špela Močnik, asymptotejournal.com

interview

An interview with Damir Karakaš

"You should look for the reason my character ended up the way he did in that context. Although this isn't an autobiographical novel, but a fictional novel with autobiographical elements, I happen to have ended up in that hell so I know very well what I'm talking about. It's a beautiful building that tourists like to take pictures of, and I passed by it a hundred times and admired it, but I never dreamed that some day I'd end up deep under its foundations, in the catacombs where during the French Revolution they kept people who were about to be sent to the guillotine. This is a novel about a different Paris, a novel about demystifying illusions."

interview

An interview with Gordan Nuhanović

In an interview with Ooligan Press, Gordan Nuhanović discusses writing The Survival League and his experiences as a Croatian author and journalist.

interview

That Which is Expounded as Unfathomable

Interview: Branko Čegec

"Quorum in its first phase, that is, in the first five years while I was editing it together with my editorial board, must in some way be understood as a generational magazine, for it is a fact that it was dominated by an upcoming generation. When I, as you put it, declined the possibility that Quorum might be a generational project, I primarily had in mind a comparison with the existing tradition of generational magazines in Croatia, such as Krugovi, Razlog or the first issues of Pitanja."

Interviewer: Tvrtko Vuković
RELATIONS

panorama

Rebecca Duran's Take on Modern Day Life in Pazin (Istria)

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.

review

Review of Dubravka Ugrešić's Age of Skin

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 .

panorama

Vlaho Bukovac Exhibition in Zagreb Will Run Through May

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.

review

Review of Neva Lukić's Endless Endings

Read a review of Neva Lukić's collection of short stories, Endless Endings, recently translated into English, in World Literature Today.

panorama

A Guide to Zagreb's Street Art

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.

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Beloved Croatian Children's Show Professor Balthazar Now Available in English on YouTube

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.

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New Book on Croatian Football Legend Robert Prosinečki

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.

news

Sandorf Publishing House Launches American Branch

Croatian publishing house Sandorf launched their American branch called Sandorf Passage earlier this year.

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Jonathan Bousfield on the Seedy Side of the Seaside

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.

review

Review of new English translation of Grigor Vitez's AntonTon

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.

news

The Best of New Eastern European Literature

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.

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More Zagreb Street Art

Explore TimeOut's gallery of fascinating and at times thought-provoking art in the great open air gallery of the streets of Zagreb.

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Welcome to Zagreb's Hangover Museum

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.

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Jonathan Bousfield on the Future as Imagined in 1960s Socialist Yugoslavia

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.

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Untranslatable Croatian Phrases

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:

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Jonathon Bousfield on the Museum of Broken Relationships

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.

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Cool Things To Do in Zagreb

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.

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Jonathan Bousfield on Diocletian's Legacy in Split

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.

interview

The Poetry of Zagreb

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You Haven't Experienced Zagreb if You Haven't Been to the Dolac Market

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.

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Croatian Phrases Translated into English

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.

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Discover Croatia's Archaeological Secrets

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.

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Croatian Sites on UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List

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.

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Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb

The National Theater in Zagreb, Croatia’s capital, is one of those things which always finds its way to every visitor’s busy schedule.

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Zagreb's Street Art

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.