Showing results by author "Ellen Elias-Bursać - translator" in All Categories

The city of Vukovar, situated on Croatia's easternmost periphery, across the Danube River from Serbia, was the site of some of the worst violence in the wars that rocked ex-Yugoslavia in the early '90s. It is referred to only as "the city" throughout this taut political thriller from one of Europe's most celebrated young writers.

As a novelist, Matija makes things up for a living. Not yet thirty, he’s written two well-received books. It’s his third that is as big a failure as his private life. Unable to confine his fabrications to fiction, he’s been abandoned by his girlfriend over his lies. But all Matija has is invention. Especially when it comes to his childhood and the death of his father. Whatever happened to Matija as a young boy, he can’t remember. He feels frightened, angry, and responsible....

When the Croatian War of Independence breaks out in her hometown of Vukovar in the summer of 1991, she is nine years old, nestled within the embrace of family with her father, mother, and older brother. She is sent on a seaside vacation to be far from the hostilities. Meanwhile, her father has disappeared while fighting with the Croatian forces. By the time she returns at summer's end, everything has changed.