Format: 13,5×20,5
ISBN: 978-953-7760-01-4
Pages: 160
Binding: paperback
Published: 2010.


10,00 €
Diaries by the famous Croatian writer Ivana Brlić Mažuranić, written in the 1880s when she was fifteen to eighteen years old. The book provides insight into teenage life in the 19th century in Zagreb, the charming young character of the writer, her thoughts on literature, life and death, as well as the seeds of conflicts awaiting a female writer – all of which makes it a highly interesting read.
Format: 13,5×20,5
ISBN: 978-953-7760-01-4
Pages: 160
Binding: paperback
Published: 2010.
There is a door that we don’t know how to open. Behind them lies the solution to the riddle, the beginning-and-end. This door leading to afterlife or to the void, are constantly present in some way in the ninth poetry book of the noted Croatian author Marija Lamot. But there are also numerous smaller doors that open wide in her poems – doors leading to memories, landscapes, mirrors, moments scattered in time, flashes of an intense present. They lead into the night, into bright light, into a classroom where philosophy is discussed, into family spaces and, above all, to trees and other beings that do not speak in human voices.
In the new poetry book by the acclaimed and award-winning Croatian poet Ivan Babić, “Chet Baker on the Beach”, the readers will notice, on the one hand, the maturity, clarity of concept and stylistic certainty of this experienced writer, and on the other hand his talent for a short form that unites the lyrical and the meditative, and within which the author manages to transform elements of sensory, organic reality into imaginative metaphor. The dominant thematic framework of these subtle poems is love. The foreboding of opening up to another person, the fragility of closeness, unrest, hope and absence alternate like musical variations in a book that is, as the title already testifies, inspired and imbued with music. Music is, however, most present in the poems of the central, titular cycle, where it appears in a multiple role – as an incentive for language, as a possibility of dialogue across the barriers that separate different artistic disciplines, as an embodiment of psychological states and moods. Breath and respiration run through the manuscript as an organic link between music and song, but also as the presence of the living world of nature for which the author shows a special sensitivity (noted in his previous collections). Babić’s sense of language is manifested in lexical abundance, a flexible sentence that manages to remain light despite its complexity, an imaginative but unobtrusive creation of neologisms, and the ability to create a small, concise and rounded whole with well-chosen words.
The fourth poetry book by the young award-winning poet Josip Čekolj takes the reader on unexpected journeys through literary worlds. On the nocturnal reading and writing paths, poems in the form of acrostics are created. For these, the poet chooses the first sentences from novels that in some way marked his childhood and youth. In this way, he creates an original dialogue between poetry and prose, erasing the boundaries between older and contemporary literature and between works for children and adults. The diversity of poetic images in this little linguistic masterpiece does not contradict the unity of the whole, which is based on a kind of substrate of the author’s reflection on the world. Acting in the dual role of reader and writer, Čekolj creates verses that spring from personal memories and experiences, resonating with broader social and political problems. The collection is full of strange stylistic figures and unusual syntactic turns, which on the one hand consistently maintain the concept of an acrostic, and on the other reflect the author’s imaginative and creative freedom. With its sense of rhythm and sonority of language, “A Handful of Night Journeys” builds on Čekolj’s previous books, but it also opens up a new poetic direction along the tracks of lyrical language – a conceptually well-thought-out and stylistically rounded work that captivates with its freshness and layered vision.
Biljana Romić, born in 1960, is a Croatian indologist and cultural editor. She gained her Master of Arts title in 1997 in Zagreb, with a study of Bharati Mukherjee and postcolonial migrant faiths. She has ever since actively been researching and writing about postcolonialism and the notion of the Other. Her extensive study The women’s world of British India was written after she spent several years studying diaries and letters written by “memsahibs”. Her work is not simply a historical overview of their lives and roles during colonialism, it puts colonial history, literature and the notion of the “Other” in a contemporary critical context; Romić analyses over one hundred and fifty sources, including Indrani Sen, Amandeep Kaur, Kumari Jayawardena and Shashi Tharoor. When reading about the British colonial venture in India, we mostly encounter works that have been written from the male perspective of conquests and regimen – but colonial women have, almost from the very beginning, been a part of this venture. Biljana Romić’s book brings us the voices of these women and their lives. They journeyed into the unknown, often not prepared for the adversities of a different climate and the social roles they were going to find themselves in. They went into the unknown as wives, governesses, teachers, as young women in search of a husband; sometimes as entrepreneurs, missionaries, adventurers. Many stayed within the expected roles given by the British colonial community, but some of them showed that it is possible to overcome the limitations of their era, class and gender when it comes to their relation to India and Indians. Biljana Romić talks about the so-called “little history”, the one that appears on the margins of big historical events – and without which it is impossible to gain a complete picture of a time that has passed.