Book cover for Celebration by Damir Karakaš

Celebration

Damir Karakaš
2024 Released
1-2 Hours
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Two Lines PressISBN 9781949641677
Translated by Ellen Elias-Bursać
Mijo, a soldier in the Nazi-allied Ustaša force, has returned to his village at the end of the war. He’s hiding in a hole in the woods, watching as the soldiers who want him dead return again and again to his house, disturbing his wife and children at all hours of the day. If he can just wait long enough, he naively believes, the atrocities of the war and his own involvement in it will be forgotten, and he can have what he really wants: a quiet life farming his land with his family. 


How did Mijo become the man we encounter in these pages? By facing poverty? Enduring heartbreak? Nurturing ignorance? Damir Karakaš, a war reporter who witnessed the horrors of the breakup of Yugoslavia firsthand, examines the recent history of an unsettled region in evocative prose, contrasting the beauty of nature against the failings of people. Celebration, translated by the incomparable Ellen Elias-Bursać, traces a dark path—from hapless individual to world-changing catastrophe—in search of a way to break the cycle of political violence.

Damir Karakaš

Damir Karakaš was born in 1967 in the village of Plašćica, Lika, a Croatian region known for strong, winters, wolves and world inventor Nikola Tesla. For a few years he worked in Zagreb and Split as a journalist, reporting from the front lines of the war in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, then from 2001 through 2007 he lived in Bordeaux and Paris, where he supported himself by playing the accordion. Karakaš is one of the most respected writers in Croatia and the former Yugoslavia, winner of prestigious domestic and international literary awards. He has published seven novels, three short story collections, and a travelog. His novels have been translated into ten languages, including the first translation of a work of Croatian literature into Arabic. The movie of Celebration is currently being filmed by director Bruno Anković under the mentorship of the Polish Oscar winner Pawel Pawlikowski, and will debut in 2024. He is the father of three daughters and currently lives in Zagreb. 

Ellen Elias-Bursać

Translated by

Ellen Elias-Bursać is a translator of South Slavic literature. Her accolades include the 2006 National Translation Award for her translation of David Albahari's novel Götz and Meyer. She is currently the President of the American Literary Translators Association.

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