New cover design for a novel by Lana Bastašić, Uhvati zeca (Catch the Rabbit)
Publisher: Kontrast izdavaštvo, Belgrade, Serbia
Uhvati zeca (Catch the Rabbit) is a story about two Bosnian young women and their complicated friendship. Twelve years after they last saw each other, Sara (who has been living in Dublin all these years) receives a phone call from Lejla (her closest friend from childhood) in which Lejla asks Sara to fly to Mostar and help her go on a road trip from Mostar to Vienna in order to find Armin, Lejla's long lost brother. Sara is reluctant to go as she has managed to build a new life in Ireland, away from the ghosts and horrors of the past. But something within her knows she will end up taking a plane that will carry her straight into her past…
The journey would prove to be much more than an innocuous reconnecting of old school friends: it is a road to a deeply balkanized "heart of darkness". Although the novel addresses the traumas of the war and speaks of the former Yugoslavia (in fact it is a road trip through parts of it), there is also an exploration of other issues, especially this not so easy friendship between two young women who meet again after many years without contact, and the search for an identity.
Lana Bastašić is a Yugoslav-born writer. She has published two collections of short stories and one of poetry. "Catch the Rabbit", her first novel, was published this year in Belgrade, Kontrast. Her short stories have been included in major regional anthologies throughout former Yugoslavia. She won the Best Short Story Award at the ‘Zija Dizdarević’ competition in Fojnica, Bosnia; the Jury Award at the ‘Carver: Where I’m Calling From’ festival in Podgorica, Montenegro; the Best Short Story Award at the ‘Ulaznica’ festival in Zrenjanin, Serbia; Best Play by a Bosnian Playwright Award at the competition organized by Kamerni teatar 55 in Sarajevo and Targa UNESCO Prize for poetry at the Castello di Duino festival in Trieste, Italy. She lives and works in Barcelona.
