Download or read book Croatian Nights written by Borivoj Radaković and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Destination: Croatia. This anthology brings together nine British authors whose stories are set in Croatia and the surrounding areas, and nine authors from Croatia and Serbia, many appearing in translation for the first time. Over the past five years a writers' movement called FAK - Festival of alternative Literature (Knjizevnost) - has staged large literary festivals to enormously enthusiastic audiences in Croatia and Serbia, rejecting nationalism and renewing the opportunities for exchange between these countries and the UK. The authors collected here were brought together for the first time by FAK, but they also share a dark sense of humour, a directness of expression and a willingness to look beyond imposed boundaries. Funny, bleak, honest and completely unpretentious, these eighteen stories take you straight to the heart of the country that everyone's talking about. Whether you are interested in Croatia or modern fiction, these are the most rewarding short stories you'll read all year. Croatia is becoming an increasingly popular holiday destination, but this collection is more than just a holiday romance: it sidesteps all the obvious tourist cliches and reveals just what makes CROATIAN NIGHTS unique. Book jacket.
Download or read book Croatian Love Story written by Don Wolf and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2013-04-24 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long before Don Wolf was born, the outline for A Croatian Love Story was formed in the 1900’s. An ethnic neighborhood was the site where determined women and men struggled to build, to educate and to become citizens. These Croatian immigrants formed the strong shoulders supporting cherished traditions as they learned to live in and to love their new country. Don’s photographs depict Croatian life both in the United States and in Croatia . His writing preserves generations of memories. This book is a tribute to those who came before and a blessing to those who are yet to come.
Download or read book Running Away to Home written by Jennifer Wilson and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2011-10-11 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A middle class, Midwestern family in search of meaning uproot themselves and move to their ancestral village in Croatia. "We can look at this in two ways," Jim wrote, always the pragmatist. "We can panic and scrap the whole idea. Or we can take this as a sign. They're saying the economy is going to get worse before it gets better. Maybe this is the kick in the pants we needed to do something completely different. There will always be an excuse not to go..." And that, friends, is how a typically sane middle-aged mother decided to drag her family back to a forlorn mountain village in the backwoods of Croatia. So begins author Jennifer Wilson's journey in Running Away to Home. Jen, her architect husband, Jim, and their two children had been living the typical soccer- and ballet-practice life in the most Middle American of places: Des Moines, Iowa. They overindulged themselves and their kids, and as a family they were losing one another in the rush of work, school, and activities. One day, Jen and her husband looked at each other–both holding their Starbucks coffee as they headed out to their SUV in the mall parking lot, while the kids complained about the inferiority of the toys they just got–and asked themselves: "Is this the American dream? Because if it is, it sort of sucks." Jim and Jen had always dreamed of taking a family sabbatical in another country, so when they lost half their savings in the stock-market crash, it seemed like just a crazy enough time to do it. High on wanderlust, they left the troubled landscape of contemporary America for the Croatian mountain village of Mrkopalj, the land of Jennifer's ancestors. It was a village that seemed hermetically sealed for the last one hundred years, with a population of eight hundred (mostly drunken) residents and a herd of sheep milling around the post office. For several months they lived like locals, from milking the neighbor's cows to eating roasted pig on a spit to desperately seeking the village recipe for bootleg liquor. As the Wilson-Hoff family struggled to stay sane (and warm), what they found was much deeper and bigger than themselves.
Download or read book Caf Europa written by Slavenka Drakulic and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1999-02-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Slavenka Drakulic is a journalist and writer whose voice belongs to the world.” —Gloria Steinem Today in Eastern Europe the architectural work of revolution is complete: the old order has been replaced by various forms of free market economy and de jure democracy. But as Slavenka Drakulic observes, "in everyday life, the revolution consists much more of the small things—of sounds, looks and images." In this brilliant work of political reportage, filtered through her own experience, we see that Europe remains a divided continent. In the place of the fallen Berlin Wall there is a chasm between East and West, consisting of the different way people continue to live and understand the world. Little bits—or intimations—of the West are gradually making their way east: boutiques carrying Levis and tiny food shops called "Supermarket" are multiplying on main boulevards. Despite the fact that Drakulic can find a Cafe Europa, complete with Viennese-style coffee and Western decor, in just about every Eastern European city, the acceptance of the East by the rest of Europe continues to prove much more elusive.
Download or read book Children of Earth and Sky written by Guy Gavriel Kay and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-05-10 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling author of The Fionavar Tapestry weaves a world inspired by the conflicts and dramas of Renaissance Europe. Against this tumultuous backdrop the lives of men and women unfold on the borderlands—where empires and faiths collide. From the small coastal town of Senjan, notorious for its pirates, a young woman sets out to find vengeance for her lost family. That same spring, from the wealthy city-state of Seressa, famous for its canals and lagoon, come two very different people: a young artist traveling to the dangerous east to paint the grand khalif at his request—and possibly to do more—and a fiercely intelligent, angry woman posing as a doctor’s wife but sent by Seressa as a spy. The trading ship that carries them is commanded by the accomplished younger son of a merchant family, ambivalent about the life he’s been born to live. And farther east a boy trains to become a soldier in the elite infantry of the khalif—to win glory in the war everyone knows is coming. As these lives entwine, their fates—and those of many others—will hang in the balance when the khalif sends out his massive army to take the great fortress that is the gateway to the western world....
Download or read book Croatian Tales of Long Ago written by Ivana Brlic-Mazuranic and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2022-05-28 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The collection Croatian Tales of Long Ago is considered to be a masterpiece and features a series of newly written fairy tales heavily inspired by motifs taken from ancient Slavic mythology of pre-Christian Croatia. Croatian Tales of Long Ago are seen as one of the most typical examples of the writing style of Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić. The book has been compared by literary critics to Hans Christian Andersen and J. R. R. Tolkien due to the way it combines original fantasy plots with folk mythology.
Download or read book Belladonna written by Daša Drndic and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2017-10-24 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of 2018 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation From the author of the highly acclaimed Trieste, a fierce novel about history, memory, and illness Andreas Ban, a psychologist who no longer psychologizes, a writer who no longer writes, lives alone in a coastal town in Croatia. His body is failing him. He sifts through the remnants of his life—his research, books, medical records, photographs—remembering old lovers and friends, the tragedies of WWII, the breakup of Yugoslavia. Ban’s memories of Belgrade (which he thought he had left behind) and of Amsterdam (a different world and life) alternate with meditations on hole-ridden time (ebbing away through its perforations), on his measly pension, on growing old and fragile, on the intelligence of rats and the agelessness of lobsters, on deadly nightshade. He tries to push the past away, "to land on a little island of time in which tomorrow does not exist, in which yesterday is buried.” Drndic´ leafs through the horrors of history with a cold unflinching wit. “The past is riddled with holes,” she writes. “Souvenirs can’t help here.” And they don't.
Download or read book The Island written by Meša Selimović and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The First Rule of Swimming written by Courtney Angela Brkic and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2013-05-28 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this “exquisitely crafted” novel, a Croatian woman goes to New York to search for her missing sister—and confronts her family’s dark history (Booklist). Magdalena does not panic when she learns that her younger sister has disappeared. A free spirit, Jadranka has always been prone to mysterious absences. But when weeks pass with no word, Magdalena leaves the isolated Croatian island where their family has always lived and sets off to New York to find her sister. Her search begins to unspool the history of their family, reaching back three generations to a country torn by war. A haunting and sure-footed debut by an award-winning writer, The First Rule of Swimming explores the legacy of betrayal and loss in a place where beauty is fused inextricably with hardship, and where individuals are forced to make wrenching choices as they are swept up in the tides of history. “Suspenseful . . . well-paced.” —The New Yorker “Gracefully interweave[s] three generations of family stories and lies.” —O, The Oprah Magazine “Examines lives bruised and twisted by history, like weather-beaten trees that nevertheless manage to produce the sweetest fruit.” —The New York Times Book Review
Download or read book The Hired Man written by Aminatta Forna and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-03-28 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful novel about the indelible effects of war and the memories which stir beneath the silence of a quiet Croatian town, from Orange Prize-shortlisted and Commonwealth Writers' Prize-winning author Aminatta Forna 'Supremely masterful' INDEPENDENT 'The Hired Man seals her reputation as arguably the best writer of fiction in this field' EVENING STANDARD 'Terrific skill and insight' DAILY MAIL Gost is surrounded by mountains and fields of wild flowers. The summer sun burns. The Croatian winter brings freezing winds. Beyond the boundaries of the town an old house which has lain empty for years is showing signs of life. One of the windows, glass darkened with dirt, today stands open, and the lively chatter of English voices carries across the fallow fields. Laura and her teenage children have arrived. A short distance away lies the hut of Duro Kolak, who lives alone with his two hunting dogs. As he helps Laura with repairs to the old house, they uncover a mosaic beneath the ruined plaster and, in the rising heat of summer, painstakingly restore it. But Gost is not all it seems; conflicts long past still suppurate beneath the scars.
Download or read book Girl at War written by Sara Novic and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2016-03-22 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For readers of The Tiger’s Wife and All the Light We Cannot See comes a powerful debut novel about a girl’s coming of age—and how her sense of family, friendship, love, and belonging is profoundly shaped by war. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BOOKPAGE, BOOKLIST, AND ELECTRIC LITERATURE • ALEX AWARD WINNER • LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE FINALIST • LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION Zagreb, 1991. Ana Jurić is a carefree ten-year-old, living with her family in a small apartment in Croatia’s capital. But that year, civil war breaks out across Yugoslavia, splintering Ana’s idyllic childhood. Daily life is altered by food rations and air raid drills, and soccer matches are replaced by sniper fire. Neighbors grow suspicious of one another, and Ana’s sense of safety starts to fray. When the war arrives at her doorstep, Ana must find her way in a dangerous world. New York, 2001. Ana is now a college student in Manhattan. Though she’s tried to move on from her past, she can’t escape her memories of war—secrets she keeps even from those closest to her. Haunted by the events that forever changed her family, Ana returns to Croatia after a decade away, hoping to make peace with the place she once called home. As she faces her ghosts, she must come to terms with her country’s difficult history and the events that interrupted her childhood years before. Moving back and forth through time, Girl at War is an honest, generous, brilliantly written novel that illuminates how history shapes the individual. Sara Nović fearlessly shows the impact of war on one young girl—and its legacy on all of us. It’s a debut by a writer who has stared into recent history to find a story that continues to resonate today. Praise for Girl at War “Outstanding . . . Girl at War performs the miracle of making the stories of broken lives in a distant country feel as large and universal as myth.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editor’s Choice) “[An] old-fashioned page-turner that will demand all of the reader’s attention, happily given. A debut novel that astonishes.”—Vanity Fair “Shattering . . . The book begins with what deserves to become one of contemporary literature’s more memorable opening lines. The sentences that follow are equally as lyrical as a folk lament and as taut as metal wire wrapped through an electrified fence.”—USA Today
Download or read book On the Edge of Reason written by Miroslav Krleza and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2023-06-06 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the great Croatian writer: a masterly work of literature—hilarious, unforgiving, and utterly reasonable Until the age of fifty-two, the protagonist of On the Edge of Reason suffered a monotonous existence as a highly respected lawyer. He owned a carriage and wore a top hat. He lived the life of “an orderly good-for-nothing among a whole crowd of neat, gray good-for-nothings.” But, one evening, surrounded by ladies and gentlemen at a party, he hears the Director-General tell a lively anecdote of how he shot four men like dogs for trespassing on his property. In response, our hero blurts out an honest thought. From this moment, all hell breaks loose. Written in 1938, On the Edge of Reason reveals the fundamental chasm between conformity and individuality. As folly piles upon folly, hypocrisy upon hypocrisy, reason itself begins to give way, and the edge between reality and unreality disappears.
Download or read book A Town Called River written by Igor Rendic and published by Amazon Digital Services LLC - KDP Print US. This book was released on 2021-12-12 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Returning to his hometown of Rijeka, Croatia, to wrap things up after his grandmother's passing, Paul gets more than he expected in terms of inheritance-way more than just a stuffy old apartment downtown. The legacy of his grandmother's work as a krsnik-a traditional magic user tasked with keeping the thin line between the humans and the things that prey on them-falls on his shoulders, threatening to change everything he thought he knew about life, the city he left behind so long ago, and himself. As the line keeps getting thinner, it'll soon be up to Paul, with help from some unexpected (and witchy) places, to prove worthy of his legacy while fighting for the city's humanity, and trying not to lose his own along the way.
Download or read book Croatian Princess written by Frances Vidakovic and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: CROATIAN PRINCESS - A COLLECTION OF MUSINGS "I should start this book by stating that while I am Croatian, I am by no means a princess in the conventional sense of the word. But that was the tag pinned on me and all foreigners when I moved overseas and planted myself on the island of Korcula." CROATIAN PRINCESS is a compilation of articles which appeared in Australia's Croatian Herald back in 2007. Over the course of the year, Frances served as a special features writer for the newspaper and happily shared with readers her musings on all things to do with Croatia. This collection of articles focuses on her experiences as an Australian-born Croatian girl, living life as an Inbetweener. For years she felt the familiar tug between two beautiful countries and lived a life of limbo, navigating to and fro, never knowing quite how or where to find that perfect middle ground. From "What Croats Living In Croatia Really Think Of Us" to "Why It's So Hard To Pack Your Bags And Go Live In Croatia Forever" this warm and insightful collection will resonate with anyone who has ever felt the tugging of his or her heart in two directions.
Download or read book The Hotel Tito written by Ivana Bodrozic and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most powerful autobiographical novel written about the Yugoslav wars. A timely and deeply accessible book that speaks to what it is like to be displaced by war. Hotel Tito is an award-winning autobiographical novel of the Serbo-Croatian War. Author Ivana Bodrožić was born in the Croatian town of Vukovar, just across the Danube from Serbia. In the fall of 1991, Vukovar was besieged by the Yugoslav People's Army for eighty-seven days. When the army broke the siege, people came up out of the basements where they'd been sheltering from bombardment; women and children were allowed out of the besieged city, but the army bused 400 men from the hospital to a farm on the outskirts where soldiers and Serbian paramilitaries massacred them. Bodrožić's father was among those taken and murdered. In Hotel Tito, after fleeing the war zone their town has become, the mother and two children are housed along with other displaced persons at a former communist school in the village of Kumrovec (the birthplace of Josip Tito). For years they share a single room just large enough for their three beds, waiting to hear whether the narrator's father survived and when they'll be granted an apartment of their own. In the meantime life goes on for the teenage protagonist, first loves bloom and burn quickly, new friendships are acquired and lost, new truths emerge, and new emotions. But she never loses her shy, insightful voice, nor her self-deprecating sense of humor. Hotel Tito is a sensitive and forthright coming of age novel in a time of atrocity and loss.
Download or read book The Apple King written by Barbara Anne King and published by . This book was released on 2021-02-03 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In 1881, Nikola Markovich's ambitions took him from poverty in Croatia to pursuing his dreams in America. And despite a rocky start, the determined foreigner finds his fortune in the booming apple business. But years later, his sinful burden resurfaces when he hears word of his homeland's fight for independence. As conflict brews in Europe, Markovich can no longer stand by and watch Croatia's desperate struggle. But when a Slavic diplomat comes to town to lobby for assistance, Markovich is shocked to discover a connection to his hidden disgrace that tears his loyalty in two. Can the remorseful man put aside his checkered past and help his people rise from the ashes of war?" -- Back cover.
Download or read book Mothers and Daughters written by Vedrana Rudan and published by Croatian Literature. This book was released on 2018 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the center of this novel is the story of a daughter looking after her mother, who's been admitted to a nursing home after a stroke landed her in the hospital. All her mother wants is pain medicine and to go home. This delicate situation serves as a jumping-off point for Rudan to wander freely through memories of her parents, her husband, friends, and a daughter of her own. Out of these elements, Rudan weaves together an unsentimental, unflinching story about the difficult love that exists between parents and children, the inability of people ever to say the right thing, the grotesque--yet universal--process of growing old, and the perverse mysteries of love and death.
