Besides, I don’t know how to write those two kids: you keep shrinking and growing in my memory, like illusive land to desperate sailors.” Sara often writes as if to Lejla: “I can’t beautify those days, I can’t give them some special, big meaning. But Lejla still has such a hold over Sara that she books a plane ticket right away.Īlternating chapters, with the text enclosed in brackets, dive into the friends’ past: school days, losing their virginity, and burying Lejla’s pet white rabbit, Bunny. No matter that Sara and Lejla haven’t been in contact in 12 years. Her bold, brassy pal says she needs Sara to pick her up in Mostar and drive her to Vienna to find her brother, Armin. It’s a rude awakening, then, when she gets a phone call from her childhood best friend, Lejla Begić. She rarely thinks about her past in Bosnia or hears her mother tongue. Sara has made a new life for herself in Dublin, with a boyfriend and an avocado tree. Catch the Rabbit ( Uhvati zeca), 2021.My literature in translation statistics for 2021 have been abysmal so far, but here’s my token contribution to Women in Translation Month: Catch the Rabbit by Lana Bastašić, originally published in 2018 and translated from the Serbo-Croatian by the author herself.Permanent Pigments ( Trajni pigmenti), 2010.In 2017, Bastašić has signed the Declaration on the Common Language of the Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrins. It was translated into English by Bastašić herself and published by Picador in the UK and Restless Books in the US. It won the 2020 EU Prize for Literature and was shortlisted for the NIN Award. The structure of the book draws inspiration from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with themes of exile, identity, and is divided into twelve chapters, as is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Her debut novel Catch the Rabbit ( Serbian: Uhvati zeca) was published in Belgrade in 2018, and then reprinted in Sarajevo. In addition to novels, Bastašić has written in many different genres: short stories, children’s stories, poetry, and stage plays.
She studied English at the University of Banja Luka and received an MA in Cultural Studies from the University of Belgrade. She was born in Zagreb to a Serbian family in 1986 and immigrated to Banja Luka, Bosnia-Herzegovina as a young child. Lana Bastašić ( Serbian Cyrillic: Лана Басташић born 27 August 1986) is a Bosnian and Serbian writer, novelist and translator. University of Banja Luka, University of Belgrade
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