Celebration

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.

Damir Karakaš was born in 1967 in the village of Plašćica, in the Croatian region of Lika. He worked in Zagreb and Split as a journalist, reporting from the front lines of the war in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. From 2001 through 2007 he lived in Bordeaux and Paris, where he supported himself by playing the accordion. One of the most respected writers in Croatia and the former Yugoslavia, Karakaš is 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. A film based on Celebration four major awards (Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Male Lead, Best Cinematography) at the 2024 Pula Summer Film Festival. He is the father of three daughters and currently lives in Zagreb.

Ellen Elias-Bursac translates novels and non-fiction by Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian writers. ALTA's National Translation Award was given to her translation of Albahari's novel Götz and Meyer in 2006.