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The Balkans

January 2004

In this region’s literature we find not a single “Balkan” identity, but multiple Balkans–defined not only by ethnicity but by politics, history, nature (lovely and indifferent), and personal memory. Affirming these manifold perspectives are the classic Croatian Miroslav Krleza’s surreal Banquet in Blitva, set in a distinctly Balkan Everywhere of blended places and events; the Jewish Serbian writer Ivan Ivanji’s frighteningly lyrical “Games on the Banks of the Danube”; Albanian writer Fatos Lubonja’s “Ahlem,” about a prisoner’s skewed loyalty to a dictator; and Luljeta Lleshanaku’s pastoral poetry. In “Theft” and “Cactus” the Bosnian short story master Miljenko Jergovic finds the humor in life at the outbreak of war in Sarajevo. And the German writer Juli Zeh casts her acute eye over the landscape in the aftermath of the Balkan wars.

Games on the Banks of the Danube
By Ivan Ivanji
My parents, who had been so inept as to be Jews, were already under arrest by then.
Translated from German by John K. Cox
Theft
By Miljenko Jergovic
They just disappeared one day without fuss or explanation.
Translated from Bosnian by Stela Tomasevic
From “Silence Has Its Sound: Travels through Bosnia”
By Juli Zeh
Crossing the Serbian Republic’s BorderMost of the Republika Srpska border is made of garbage—it seems the whole town of Stolac brings its trash here. I meet three oncoming cars in fifty kilometers.…
Translated from German by Gerald Chapple
Cactus
By Miljenko Jergovic
She carefully opened her backpack and even more carefully pulled out a box displaying the logo of a well-known brand of cognac.
Translated from Bosnian by Stela Tomasevic
Ahlem
By Fatos Lubonja
“Stand up! The greatest man of the nation is being buried!”
Translated from Albanian by John Hodgson
It’s Not Time For . . .
By Luljeta Lleshanaku
It’s not time for a change.As long as I can rememberit’s never been time for a change.Like cars that screech to a halthouses standpoised in their old breeding groundof rotten acacia leaves.From…
Translated from Albanian by Shpresa Qatipi & Henry Israeli
The Cinema
By Luljeta Lleshanaku
Without failSundays at the cinemawere always rainy daysbig black umbrellasclashing against the ticket booth.The doorman among the torn stubslooked like a watercolorhung crookedly on a kitchen wall.We…
Translated from Albanian by Shpresa Qatipi & Henry Israeli
February Sky
By Luljeta Lleshanaku
Large, gray, sprawledlike an old elephant.Winter is ending.Low, sloping roofs are overturned boatsslumbering along the shores of drowsiness.Twenty years of an oak tree’s lifeis burned instantly…
Translated from Albanian by Shpresa Qatipi & Henry Israeli
From “The Banquet in Blitva”
By Miroslav Krleza
Croatian writer Miroslav Krleza portrays a distinctly Balkan Everywhere of blended places and events in this surreal novel excerpt.
Translated from Croatian by Edward Dennis Goy & Jasna Levinger
The Postman
By Luljeta Lleshanaku
He comes to me every day with a cruel bounce in his stepwith eyes darting like little green flames—the town postman in a heavy, damp coatjovially announcing he has nothing for me.I see his blue uniform…
Translated from Albanian by Shpresa Qatipi & Henry Israeli
Irreversible Landscapes
By Luljeta Lleshanaku
Irreversible is the riveron whose backdead leaves swirl.Irreversible are words-the dust of roadsmingled with breath, warm breaththat sticks to our trembling lipslike fog to a boat.Irreversible is this…
Translated from Albanian by Shpresa Qatipi & Henry Israeli
The Island You and I
living on an islandfar from cities with traffic lights and people.Outside we hear the rustlingsof a bed of reedswhere the wind with its toothless mouth blowsluring in tides.A boat is moored on the shorea…
Translated from Albanian by Shpresa Qatipi & Henry Israeli
Shadows on the Snow
By Luljeta Lleshanaku
The snow comes late this year. Violet shadowsdoze like shepherds rounda white fire.The swaying shadow of a fence looks like a woman’s clavicle—a woman who dreams of her lover’s snowy journey…
Translated from Albanian by Shpresa Qatipi & Henry Israeli