The first English translation of a modern epic, a great Middle European novel spanning two hundred years, which explores a world destroyed by fascism, communism and nationalism. Both a family saga and a powerful historical novel, The Brass Age is the story of the "Volksdeutscher", a German minority in North-Eastern Croatia (Slavonia) who emigrated there in the 18th century. These Germans, who were integrated into the local population, were in 1940 conscripted into the Waffen S.S. The novel's protagonist, the narrator's father, is forced into this military service and eventually deserts, despite the danger this involves. At the core of the novel is the tragic love story of the narrator's parents; two characters shackled by their divided history. Former fighters in opposing camps – one a committed Partisan and the other a deserter from the German army – if they had met earlier, each would have killed the other. Captivating and poetic, The Brass Age reflects on immigration, identity and the existential meanings of art and life.

Tea Radan, the narrator of the novel Canzone di Guerra, reflects on her own past and in doing so, composes a forgotten mosaic of historical events that she wants to first tear apart and then reassemble with all the missing fragments. In front of the readers eyes, a collage of different genres takes place - from (pseudo) autobiography to documentary material and culinary recipes. With them, the author Dasa Drndic skillfully explores different perspectives on the issue of emigration, the unresolved history of the Second World War, while emphasizing the absurdity of politics of differences between neighboring nations. The narrator subtly weaves the torturous story of searching for her own identity with a relaxed, sometimes disguised ironic style, which takes the reader surprisingly easily into the world of persecution and the sense of alienation between herself and others.

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics with liquid gold, to highlight and celebrate an object's past. In this powerful and personal novella, Senka Maric uses the concept of kintsugi to interrogate ideas of illness, survival and recovery. Two months after her husband packs his bags and leaves the family home, the narrator finds a lump in her armpit. It's a discovery she's been dreading ever since her mother's breast cancer diagnosis sixteen years earlier, and one that will change her body forever. Through diagnosis, chemotherapy, and surgery, the narrator returns to those moments of her girlhood when she learnt to be ashamed of her sexuality and estranged from her body - the same body that now threatens to fall apart during her illness. Laced with a drive for life, sensuality and pleasure, Body Kintsugi is an intimate and optimistic book about a woman's relationship with her body as it breaks and is put back together.

Colloquial Croatian provides a step-by-step course in Croatian as it is written and spoken today. Combining a user-friendly approach with a thorough treatment of the language, it equips learners with the essential skills needed to communicate confidently and effectively in Croatian in a broad range of situations. No prior knowledge of the language is required. Key features include: * progressive coverage of speaking, listening, reading and writing skills * structured, jargon-free explanations of grammar * an extensive range of focused and stimulating exercises * realistic and entertaining dialogues covering a broad variety of scenarios * useful vocabulary lists throughout the text * additional resources available at the back of the book, including a full answer key, a grammar summary and bilingual glossaries Balanced, comprehensive and rewarding, Colloquial Croatian will be an indispensable resource both for independent learners and students taking courses in Croatian. Audio material to accompany the course is available to download free in MP3 format from www.routledge.com/cw/colloquials. Recorded by native speakers, the audio material features the dialogues and texts from the book and will help develop your listening and pronunciation skills.

*WINNER OF THE BEST TRANSLATED BOOK AWARD USA* *SHORTLISTED FOR THE EBRD PRIZE* *SHORTLISTED FOR THE OXFORD-WEIDENFELD PRIZE* "A writer and thinker of ever greater relevance, a voice whoSe wide-ranging screeds we ignore at our peril" CLAIRE MESSUD "Her work is of such power and scope that had she remained alive, she would have been a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature" JOSIP NOVAKOVICH, Los Angeles Review of Books An urgent new novel about death, war and memory, and a bristling follow-on from Belladonna. In this extraordinary final work, Dasa Drndic's combative, probing voice reaches new heights. In her relentless search for truth she delves into the darkest corners of our lives. And as she chastises, she also atones. Andreas Ban failed in his suicide attempt. Even as his body falters and his lungs constrict, he taps on the glass of history - an impenetrable case filled with silent figures - and tries to summon those imprisoned within. Mercilessly, fearlessly, he continues to dissect society and his environment, shunning all favours as he goes after the evils and hidden secrets of others. History remembers the names of perpetrators, not of the victims. Ban travels from Rijeka to Rovinj in nearby Istria, from Belgrade to Toronto to Tirana, from Parisian avenues to Italian palazzi. Ghosts follow him wherever he goes: chess grandmasters who disappeared during WWII; the lost inhabitants of Latvia; war criminals who found work in the C.I.A. and died peacefully in their beds. Ban's family is with him too: those he has lost and those with one foot in the grave. As if left with only a few pieces in a chess game, Andreas Ban plays a stunning last match against Death. Translated from the Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth

Doppelganger consists of two stories that skillfully revisit the question of "doubles" (famously explored by Stevenson, Dostoyevsky and others), and how an individual is perpetually caught between their own beliefs and those imposed on them by society. `Arthur and Isabella' is a story of the relationship between two elderly people who meet on New Year's Eve - a romantic encounter which turns into a grotesque portrayal of the loneliness of old age. The second story `Pupi' - a strange mirror of the first - centres on the life of a man who ends up on the streets and associates only with street-sellers the rhinoceroses in the zoo. Together these tales crate the highly original atmosphere that Drndic t is famous for in all her works.

"Belladonna is brutal, beautiful, and unforgettable . . . One of the truly outstanding novels of recent years" EILEEN BATTERSBY, Los Angeles Review of Books ** Winner of the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2018** ** Shortlisted for the inaugural E.B.R.D. Prize for Literature ** ** Shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize ** An excoriating work of fiction that references the twentieth century's darkest hours Andreas Ban is a writer and a psychologist, an intellectual proper, but his world has been falling apart for years. When he retires with a miserable pension and finds out that he is ill, he gains a new perspective on the debris of his life and the lives of his friends. In defying illness and old age, Andreas Ban is cynical and powerful, and in his unravelling of his own past and the lives of others, he uncompromisingly lays bare a gamut of taboos. Andreas Ban stands for a true hero of our times; a castaway intellectual of a society which subdues every critical thought under the guise of political correctness. Belladonna addresses some of the twentieth century's worst human atrocities in a powerful fusion of fiction and reality, the hallmark of one of Europe's finest contemporary writers. Translated from the Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth

The collection 'Fariground Magician' brings together stories about love fulfilled and unfulfilled, about things that are visible in the everyday world and values that are perceptible only at exceptional moments. The narration moves from apparent realism to other genres, such as crime fiction, the thriller and erotic prose. Memories, intimations and premonitions are infused in these stories with a tranquillity that accepts what fate brings, even when, as in the stories Pockets Full of Stones or Nosedive, efforts are made to change it. Lengold uses eroticism as a natural ingredient of human life, as an integrated tension consisting of two inseparable aspects - body and soul - energising stories like Love Me Tender, Fairground Magician, Zugzwang, Wanderings, and Aurora Borealis. In Fairground Magician, Lengold is a lucid observer of minute details and subtle emotional shifts. In stories like It Could Have Been Me, Shadow, or Ophelia, Get Thee to a Nunnery, she manages to leap over the wall between the bodily surface and the human interior in a very distinctive way. No matter how common are the situations she depicts - whether it be broken marriages, unfulfilled expectations or the motives of forlorn lovers - Lengold is constantly searching for the authentic, finding it within the sophisticated irony which is a trademark of her fiction. "Fairground Magician is a wonderful collection of short stories. Sensuous, charming, witty and urbane, Jelena Lengold's stories of complex relationships and passions are both highly literary and highly readable. This collection has already won a number of European prizes: it deserves to be discovered and treasured by the British readers." Vesna Goldsworthy, author of 'Chernobyl Strawberries' and 'Inventing Ruritania'

Colloquial Serbian: The Complete Course for Beginners has been carefully developed by an experienced teacher to provide a step-by-step course to Serbian as it is written and spoken today. Combining a clear, practical and accessible style with a methodical and thorough treatment of the language, it equips learners with the essential skills needed to communicate confidently and effectively in Serbian in a broad range of situations. No prior knowledge of the language is required. Colloquial Serbian is exceptional; each unit presents a wealth of grammatical points that are reinforced with a wide range of exercises for regular practice. A full answer key, a grammar summary, bilingual glossaries and English translations of dialogues can be found at the back as well as useful vocabulary lists throughout. Key features include: A clear, user-friendly format designed to help learners progressively build up their speaking, listening, reading and writing skills Jargon-free, succinct and clearly structured explanations of grammar An extensive range of focused and dynamic supportive exercises Realistic and entertaining dialogues covering a broad variety of narrative situations Helpful cultural points about life in Serbia An overview of the sounds of Serbian Balanced, comprehensive and rewarding, Colloquial Serbian is an indispensable resource both for independent learners and students taking courses in Serbian. Audio material to accompany the course is available to download free in MP3 format from www.routledge.com/cw/colloquials. Recorded by native speakers, the audio material features the dialogues and texts from the book and will help develop your listening and pronunciation skills.

Baba Yaga is an old hag who lives in a house built on chicken legs and kidnaps small children. She is one of the most pervasive and powerful creatures in all mythology. She appears in many forms: as Pupa, a tricksy, cantankerous old woman who keeps her legs tucked into a huge furry boot; as a trio of mischievous elderly women who embark on the trip of a lifetime to a hotel spa; and as a villainous flock of ravens, black hens and magpies infected with the H5N1 virus. But what story does Baba Yaga have to tell us today? This is a quizzical tale about one of the most pervasive and poerful creatures in all mythology, and an extraordinary yarn of identity, secrets, storytelling and love.

'Farewell Cowboy' is a modern and hard-hitting novel by one of Croatia's best known writers. The plot consists of a straight-forward linear narrative, rich in local colour and sentiment. It tells the story of Dada, who returns to her home town on the Adriatic coast, and tries to unravel the mystery of her brother Daniel's death. Daniel, although young, smart and popular, threw himself under a train in mysterious circumstances. In search for clues, Dada meets an array of eccentric characters and passionately falls in love with the young gigolo Andjelo, who is a part of a film crew shooting a Western on the nearby prairie. Slowly and painfully she discovers all there is to know about her brother's death, and how she was betrayed by someone close to her. In her debut novel, Savicevic playfully transposes the genre of a Western into the contemporary world, challenging the omnipotent heroes of childhood and questioning what a hero is today. Her Adriatic hometown is a hellish city and the social reality of today's Croatia is portrayed as harsh and corrupt. The fact that a Western adventure is being filmed nearby gives the book its title and adds to the mood; redolent of transient glamour and unrealized small-town dreams.

Very different from the rougher, blunter prose of her male contemporaries, Alma Lazarevska's stories can perhaps be described as the tender heart of Bosnian war. Writing from the domestic perspective, her prose is nevertheless deceptively simple; allowing the horror of the war to impinge with devastating effect on the most banal, everyday scene. Apart from the protagonist of the first story, the characters remain nameless. In five of the six stories we can assume that we are following the same unnamed female narrator, who refers to her husband simply as "He" and her son as simply "The Boy." In a conflict where ethnic identity is at the heart, it seems a sobering decision to dispense with names. The family in these stories are at the same time everyone and no-one. They might become bigger than themselves, standing for every group that has ever been the victim of violence due to their ethnicity; or they might represent the de-humanization that has to occur in order for such persecutions to be carried out, reduced to pronouns rather than individuals with names. "Him" and "her" seem perilously close to "it." This collection brings home the acute unfairness of forcing that contemplation of death upon another person, of depriving them of that human freedom to dream and delude themselves. And it is a beautiful acknowledgement of the small humanities that we cling to when we are at the mercy of so much inhumanity.

For most of its history, Zagreb was a small town to which big things happened. It has been ruled by Hungary and the Habsburg Monarchy, threatened by the Ottomans, and absorbed into Yugoslavia. Today it is the capital city of the newly independent Croatia.
In Zagreb: A Cultural History, Celia Hawkesworth guides us through a modern city that reflects all the important trends in Central European culture, architecture, and fashion. We visit the city's center, a beautiful "green horseshoe," graced with trees and public gardens, and lined with imposing buildings. Hawkesworth explores this central core and the atmospheric old town on a rise above it, finding a mix of old and modern buildings, a rich cultural tradition, and a vibrant outdoor cafe life. She describes the many statues in the streets and squares, commemorating those who have contributed to the city's unique inner life. She also examines the legacy of outside invasion, fire, earthquakes, and political strife, pointing to the street names that reflect Zagreb's turbulent past. Zagreb illuminates the artistic side of the city, discussing the sculpture of Ivan Mestrovic, the unique collections of paintings in the Strossmayer and Modern Galleries, and the novels and plays of Miroslav Krleza.
A perfect book for armchair travelers, Zagreb takes us on a captivating tour of one of Eastern Europe's leading cities.

This book offers rare insights into the cultural traditions that have shaped the Balkan region - from pagan times, through folk culture, the medieval Christian churches, the encounter between Christianity and Islam, up to the religious and national mythologies that have proved so destructive in the present day. With the Balkans a central focus of European concern at the beginning of the twenty-first century, this volume is a timely reminder of the complex cultural processes that continue to affect the modern world.

This book offers rare insights into the cultural traditions that have shaped the Balkan region--from pagan times, through folk culture, the medieval Christian churches, the encounter between Christianity and Islam, up to the religious and national mythologies that have proved so destructive in the present day. With the Balkans a central focus of European concern at the beginning of the 21st Century, this volume is a timely reminder of the complex cultural processes that continue to affect the modern world.

The first complete literary history in relation to women's writing in south-east Europe. The author provides a broad chronological account of this contribution, dividing the book into two main parts; the earlier period up until the eighteenth century concentrates on the projections of gender through the medium of oral tradition and the lives of a handful of educated women in medieval Serbia and the few works of literature they left. Hawkesworth also looks at the written literature produced by women, first in the mid-nineteenth century and then at the turn of the century. The second part focuses on the trials and tribulations that affected feminism and women's literature throughout the twentieth century. The author finishes by highlighting the new women's movement, 1975-1990, a great period for women in Yugoslavia which created a stimulating atmosphere for outstanding pieces of women's journalism, prose and verse, culminating in the creation of new women's studies courses in many universities.

These are the first two volumes of the Croatian poet and novelist Irena Vrkljan's lyrical autobiography. Although each novel illuminates the other, they also stand alone as original and independent works of art. In "The Silk, the Shears, "Vrkljan traces the symbolic and moral significance of her life, and her vision of the fate of women in her mother's time and in her own. "Marina" continues the intense analysis of the poetic self, using the life of Marina Tsvetaeva to meditate on the processes behind biography.