<p>When Miroslav Krleza traveled through Russia for six months between the end of 1924 and the beginning of 1925, the celebrated Croatian writer was there to figure out what it all meant. The sprawling country was still coming to terms with the events of the 1917 revolution and reeling from Lenin's death in January 1924. During this period of profound political and social transition, Krleza opened his senses to train stations, cities, and villages and collected wildly different Russian perspectives on their collective moment in history.Krleza's impressionistic reportage of mass demonstrations and jubilant Orthodox Easter celebrations is informed by his preoccupation with the political, social, and psychological complexities of his environment. The result is a masterfully crafted modernist travelogue that resonates today as much as it did when first published in 1926.</p>

Journey to Russia

History

Krleža, Miroslav

Russia

Sandorf Passage

<p><div>Ivana Bodro&#382;ic's <i>In a Sentimental Mood</i> is emotional, but never woeful, deliberate, yet playful poetry capable of reaching both the highest and deepest registers of expression. From abstract jazz-inspired musings to bedroom intimacies, these poems converse with the idea that being alone is not the worst thing that can happen to a person. To lose your dignity and the dignity of your words--that is the worst thing.</div></p>

In a Sentimental Mood

Literature & Fiction

Bodrožic, Ivana

Poetry

<p><div>&nbsp;</div> <div>"In From <i>Nowhere to Nowhere</i> Bekim Sejranovic gives us the elegiac beauties echoing over the vanishing times and places, inviting us to reflect and at the same time to relish funky flashes of memory." --Josip Novakovich, author of <i>April Fool's Day</i> and Man Booker International Prize finalist Bekim Sejranovic's From <i>Nowhere to Nowhere</i> is a subtle yet unforgettable meditation on the factors that shape identity. The novel's unnamed narrator, raised by his grandparents and scattered to the wind from his hometown of Brcko, Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, travels to Croatia and Norway, trying to reclaim a sense of self he isn't sure he ever possessed in the first place. From his days playing soccer with friends on Unity Street outside his home to Muslim funerals, his job as an interpreter for Balkan refugees, and his fractious relationships with women, a nomadic aesthetic emerges brilliantly rendering what it means to live a life from which you have always been removed.</div></p>

From Nowhere to Nowhere

Sejranovic, Bekim

Literary

<p><div>"<i>The President Shop</i> is a marvelous, timeless book that sweeps between the personal and the panoramic as it asks, Does every family, or country, contain an axis, around which the rest of it spins? Can you hear the voice of a stone? How clearly can anyone see the past or future? For which tyrannies have we been unwittingly waving flags?" --Catherine Lacey, author of <i>Pew</i> and <i>Certain American States</i><br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> The President, the founder of the Nation, is an old man now, but his young and unifying spirit stands steadfastly at the heart of The President Shop, Vesna Maric's debut novel. Images of and tributes to the President are found in all homes in the Nation, procured from stores like the one Ruben and Rosa run. The couple met as partisans, fighting to forge the Nation in the crucible of conflict. But even though their pride shines as brightly as the gilded bust of the President, the younger generation has questioned whether the Nation really has its citizens best interests in mind. Ruben's brother is actively working to avoid mandatory military service as he pines away for another man, and Ruben and Rosa's daughter Mona is too busy adjusting to womanhood to get caught up in state-mandated nostalgia. To further exacerbate the family tension, an elderly uncle claims to have invented a machine to see into the future, which he stores in the basement of the family's apartment building. But there is no telling what the future really holds in store as the beliefs of the past slowly start to crumble.</div></p>

The President Shop

Maric, Vesna

<p>In the early 1990s, as Yugoslavia begins to crumble, so too does a woman, known only as Mother. Ostracized by her Croatian neighbors because of her Serbian background, the bright cheer Mother brought to her role as a wife and mother is darkened by the onset of mental illness that devours an entire family. Seen through the acerbic and wry perspective of Mother's eldest daughter, Divine Child paints a picture of the forces that batter an individual into shape in a time of economic crisis and rabid nationalism. This unforgettable survival narrative won the 2013 Jutarnji list&nbsp;Award&nbsp;for Novel of the Year in Croatia.</p>

Divine Child

Gromaca, Tatjana

<p>With unapologetic vividness, Lejla Kalamujic depicts pre- and post-war Sarajevo by charting a daughter coping with losing her mother, but discovering herself. From imagined conversations with Franz Kafka to cozy apartments, psychiatric wards, and cemeteries, <i>Call Me Esteban</i> is a piercing meditation on a woman grasping at memories in the name of claiming her identity.</p>

Call Me Esteban

Kalamujic, Lejla

Erotica

<p>Review\n"Robert Perišic is a light bright with intelligence and twinkling with irony, flashing us the news that postwar Croatia not only endures but matters." —Jonathan Franzen on Our Man In Iraq\n"Robert Perisic depicts, with acerbic wit, a class of urban elites who are trying to reconcile their nineties rebellion with the reality of present-day Croatia. . . . The characters' snide remarks could easily sound cynical but the novel has a levity informed by the sense of social fluidity that comes with democracy." —The New Yorker on No-Signal Area\n“No-Signal Area is a mind-blowing read—a story of crime and heroism in the real-life aftermath of an all-white race war, told with wisdom, sophistication, and passion.” —Nell Zink\n“In Perisic’s poignant telling, the erasure of Yugoslavia and its socialist experiment continues to haunt its people, exes now adrift in a postwar vacancy. This void may be familiar to any reader who no longer feels connection to the divided, damaged nation he or she inhabits.” —New York Times\n"Absurdity permeates Horror and Huge Expenses, an excellent collection of tragicomic short stories . . . Throughout the collection, characters grapple with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the disintegration of Yugoslavia, the violent madness of ethnic nationalism and war, and the chaos of creating new countries and new economies." —Kent Kosak, Asymptote\n"Perišić deploys a dizzying range of protagonists drawn from all walks of life, and he has an unrivalled ear for dialogue . . . When it comes to evoking the vast panorama of Croatian life, Perišić has few rivals." —Jonathan Bousfield, writer for the Rough Guides, Time Out Croatia, and Jutarnji list\n“Robert Perišić’s absurdism is perhaps best appreciated in a moment such as the one we live in, the ordinariness of familial connections cataloged in wartime, between bombardments, a woman running with a wheel of cheese, a father paralyzed by trauma. Everyone, at least on the surface, still intact.”--Jai Chakrabarti, Author of A Play for the End of the World, winner of the Jewish Book Council Debut Fiction Prize\nOutside of Croatia, Robert Perišic is best known for his novels, but short stories are what first garnered him recognition, and eventually led him to be considered one of Croatia's most important contemporary voices. Horror and Huge Expenses is a career-spanning collection of stories that demonstrate why Perišic's wryly incisive prose, able to hit so many registers, resonates with readers everywhere. From the frontlines of tragic ethnic conflicts to capturing the hilariously absurd realities of globalism, Perišic unapologetically renders failure and loss, so often finding aching beauty in both, by pulling readers into the stray thoughts and moments upon which all of our lives are built, whether we realize it or not.</p>

Horror and Huge Expenses

Perišic, Robert

<p>In the Nigerian language Igbo "iberibe" means "messed up." This stunning short story collection by Kasimma grabs readers and pulls them into the cities and villages of today's Nigeria. Against the glare of smart phone screens, spirits of the dead flicker, elders admonish their grown children, rituals are done in secret, and the scars of war are just below the surface in the lives of astonishingly vivid characters. Kasimma's stories effortlessly inhabit the dark, alluring, and beautiful spaces between mystical Nigerian traditions and our strange contemporary condition.</p>

All Shades of Iberibe

Kasimma

Short Stories & Anthologies

<p>Set in World War II Yugoslavia, Radio Siga transmits the story of Kalman Gubica, a hard-drinking, but well-meaning, layabout who is forever changed after being struck by lightning.\nHaunted by the voice of his long-dead father, Kalman struggles to find meaning in his life. Drinking more doesn't help quiet the maddening messages in his head and neither does settling down with a Russian female soldier, nor joining the resistance trying to keep at bay the Hungarian fascists and German Nazis who have occupied Yugoslavia.\nDarkly funny and touching, Radio Siga reveals a facet of World War II not often encountered by English-language readers.</p>

Radio Siga

Vidak, Ivan

Humor & Satire

Condiments & Entrails

Durak, John

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