Celebration

by Damir Karakas, Ellen Elias-Bursac (Translator)

Overview

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 times of the day. If he can just wait them out, the atrocities of the war and his involvement in it will be forgotten, and then he can have what he really wants: a quiet life farming his land with his family. Or so he naively believes.

How did Mijo become the monster we encounter in these pages? 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781949641660
Publisher:	Two Lines Press
Publication date:	09/10/2024
Pages:	120
Product dimensions:	4.50(w) x 7.00(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

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 Paweł Pawlikowski, and will debut in 2024. He is the father of three daughters and currently lives in Zagreb. 

Ellen Elias-Bursać translates fiction and non-fiction from the Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian. In 2006 the novel Götz and Meyer by David Albahari in her translation from the Serbian was given the National Translation Award. She is a past president of the American Literary Translators Association.

Read an Excerpt

For a time he watched the lively swirl of the water—his gaze ordinary, everything today had to be ordinary. Then in his hair he found a shaft of yellow straw, and through it for a time he sucked at the sharp air, wishing that nothing that was going on around him had anything to do with him. He took his knife, slowly cut through the water course of the little stream, watching how, over its shiny blade, the water flowed and thinking how everything in this world follows a higher order of its own that is beyond his grasp, and this cannot be stopped by anything. With abrupt movements he stood up but then sat back down, not knowing what it was he actually wanted.

Editorial Reviews

Portrays a region and a country still haunted by the legacy of 20th-century violence it endorsed, enabled, and endured……The book can easily be read in a single sitting, but it will burrow into your consciousness with both what it says and, especially, what it steadfastly refuses to say. As fascism and other belligerent ideologies reassert themselves across the globe, Karakaš’s novella is both timely and sobering. It doesn’t provide any simplistic solutions, but its appearance in English, thanks to Elias-Bursać, is unquestionably a cause for celebration.” 
—Los Angeles Review of Books

“Damir Karakaš’ ironically titled novella Celebration probes the making of a fascist, but the protagonist’s commitment is not driven by his acceptance of a racist ideology. His choice appears to be propelled, almost innocently, by a prosaic current of amoral brutality, the Darwinian struggle for survival among the underclass.”
—Artsfuse

“A timely meditation on the many ways perpetrators can convince themselves of their own essential smallness, and thus their own essential innocence…feels reminiscent of the wartime stories of Italo Calvino, both in its brevity and power.”
—CrimeReads

“Harrowing…as this stark novel reaches its conclusion, it becomes apparent that this isn’t a book that abounds with easy answers. An unsettling look at one man’s moral drift.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“The reader’s hair will frequently stand on end from pure aesthetic thrill.”
—Miljenko Jergović, author of Kin

“Celebration is a masterpiece of Karakaš’s work to date, an event in Croatian modern literature.”
—Vijenac

“A book of the year for many Croatian critics, it is one that cries out for translation into other languages.”
—Jonathan Bousfield, Satellite Review

“A novel of profound meaning and essential literary beauty.”
—Večernji

“Karakaš’s prose is as deadly as a swarm of wasps.”
—Mića Vujičić, Nin 

From the Publisher