Introduction to Floating

Peter Hurd, classical philologist and mythologist, comes to Sarajevo for a reading – just a few days before the war begins. When his translator and admirer Rajko takes him to the bus station to see him off, Peter decides to stay on the spur of the moment: he doesn’t want to miss the chance to witness how people behave in extreme situations. He shares everyday life with Rajko, accompanies him through the neighbourhood under shellfire, meets his friends and relatives, including Sanja, with whom he falls in love. One day he sets off alone and when he returns, he is barely recognisable ...

Never before has Karahasan, the literary chronicler of Sarajevo, told such a vivid and multi-faceted story of what it means to survive days and nights in a city surrounded by smoke and stench and yet not lose hope and humour. Circling around an invisible axis, his story explores an ethical and existential borderline experience – an introduction to floating.

»Introduction to Floating is itself a contribution [to] remembrance – as is Karahasan’s entire oeuvre. ... In addition, this fairly short novel is populated by an abundance of vivid characters that makes you marvel.« Malte Osterloh, Frankfurter Rundschau

»It’s not ... opposites that attract the author; Karahasan is the master of synthesis. Or, in other words: of the hope for peace.« Norbert Mappes-Niediek, der Freitag

»Introduction to Floating is enlivened by moments of delicate, poetic weightlessness. ... The same is true of Karahasan’s prose. It illuminates war brightly enough to show its senseless brutality. At the same time, it generally only hints at the cruelty instead of showing it to us in all its extremes – and thus what it evokes is all the more powerful.« Gregor Szyndler, NZZ am Sonntag

»... the world of which this magnificent novel speaks [extends] far beyond the borders of Sarajevo.« Tilman Spreckelsen, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»With his Introduction to Floating, Karahasan has added an impressive novel to his project of relocating Sarajevo.« Lothar Müller, Süddeutsche Zeitung

»Panorama of a crisis, political thriller and crime novel all at once, Introduction to Floating is once again impressive evidence for the fact that … Dževad Karahasan is the most important and most innovative writer of the former Yugoslavia.« Marko Martin, Welt am Sonntag

»Readers let Dževad Karahasan take them by the hand with great pleasure. The Bosnian novelist and essayist, who grew up with the Quran, well-versed in Goethe and Georg Büchner, appears as a welcome pilot amidst the perils of West-East misunderstandings.« Ilma Rakusa, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

»Reading Karahasan again is more topical than ever in this age of supposedly cemented identities.« Marko Martin, Die Welt

»His books are absolutely contemporary and cunningly ageless at the same time.« Deutschlandradio Kultur

»Dževad Karahasan ... is the most important chronicler of this siege, in which around 14,000 people died, and one of the most important writers of the former Yugoslavia.« SR2

»He is one of the great European scholars of our times. A book that one should have read to understand Europe’s most recent, painful history.« ORF