Forest Memories is a novel comprised of thirty-three short chapters that follow the coming of age of a boy with a heart condition. Set in a mountainous middle-of-nowhere Balkan province, it tells the story of a family gripped by bitterness and violence and of a poverty stricken upbringing; about expensive doctors and old village beliefs; mean grandfathers and mysterious old ladies, about the harsh life in the hills.

Cutting deep into the flesh of petrified patriarchy, Forest Memories is a catalogue of unrealized ambitions: to become an army officer, a basketball player, a bodybuilder, to sell hazelnuts, to shoot a bear…
There is no empathy, only a brooding violence, among the members of this household. Emotions are for the weak and, no matter what, need to be hidden, suppressed, swallowed. Until they explode to permanently scar a childhood that is not an idyllic place, but rather a place of unease and horror.

SIX EDITIONS in two years
Winner of the Petar Kočić Award and of the Fritz Award Winner of the Italian Premio ITAS Award

“His realism is truly Hamsunian, mesmerizing. He uses realistic means to create something that stands beyond realism.” Miljenko Jergović, Jutarnji list

“In a word: a remarkable book, a remarkable text; a true literary triumph in Croatian literature.” Ivan Tomašić, Booksa

 

132 Pages – Original language: Croatian (Sandorf, 2016, and Buybook, 2017) – Foreign Editions: German (Folio Verlag, 2019), Italian (Bottega Errante, 2020), Serbia (L.O.M., 2017), Bosnia and Herzegovina (Buybook, 2018), Slovenia (Beletrina, 2019), Macedonia (Makedonika Litera, 2019)

ENLISH LANGUAGE SAMPLE AVAILABLE