“I wanted to know where I had come from, and whom.”
Bosnia
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Balkans’ Alternative Postal System: An Ad-Hoc Courier’s Tale
“Across this fractured region, informal networks rule. So if you need to send something, ask someone who’s already going that way.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The DJ and the War Crimes
“Thirty years after a death squad massacred civilians in Bosnia, none of the infamous Arkan’s Tigers have stood trial for their alleged part in those crimes. And for the past few decades, one of them has been spinning trance records at European festivals and clubs.”
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
A New Era of Unreality: Stop Making Sense, or How to Write in the Age of Trump
In the Village Voice, Aleksandar Hemon explores the “unreality” of a Trump presidency, likening this era of American history to the start of the war in Bosnia in 1992, and calling for new literature that doesn’t shy away from the conflicts and destruction ahead.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Stop Making Sense, or How to Write in the Age of Trump
An essay on the importance of embracing in literature the conflict and destruction likely to arise in America in the coming four years. The piece is written from the perspective of a Bosnian-born novelist who got stuck in the United States in 1992 because of conflict in his native country that upended everything he felt […]
Posted inQuote Posts
Every Wartime Snapshot is Also a Family Photo
At Maisonneuve, Seila Rizvic reflects on being photographed as a Bosnian refugee at age two.
Posted inEditor's Pick, Nonfiction
Every Wartime Snapshot is Also a Family Photo
At Maisonneuve, Seila Rizvic reflects on being photographed as a Bosnian refugee at age two.
Posted inUncategorized
This is an interview requested by Karadzic before I give official testimony the following day in open court. Ironically, when the witness unit’s call came out of the blue in August 2011, saying that “the defence” had requested an interview, I was driving through pluvial mist up a mountain track in Bosnia to attend the […]