Sara and Serafina

Novel
Original Serbo-Croatian title: Sara i Serafina, published in 1999 by Durieux, Zagreb
Suhrkamp | Insel
Rights sold to:

Arabic world rights (Alaan)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Galaxia Gutenberg), France (Laffont), Italy (Il Saggiatore), Sweden (Bosnisk-Hercegovinska Riksförbundet i Sverige), Slovenia (Cankarjeva Založba), Turkey (Ketebe)


Sara and Serafina / Sara und Serafina
Novel
Original Serbo-Croatian title: Sara i Serafina, published in 1999 by Durieux, Zagreb

A young couple is supposed to be smuggled out of the besieged city of Sarajevo with forged baptism documents. The plan fails. The participating rescuers are tormented by guilt. Serafina, the mother, cannot bear the loss of her daughter and the destruction of love, and thus decides to die.


There are only roughly twenty minutes that lie between beginning and end of this novel, but the story spirals back as far as the year 1942, when Serafina, who called herself...

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A young couple is supposed to be smuggled out of the besieged city of Sarajevo with forged baptism documents. The plan fails. The participating rescuers are tormented by guilt. Serafina, the mother, cannot bear the loss of her daughter and the destruction of love, and thus decides to die.


There are only roughly twenty minutes that lie between beginning and end of this novel, but the story spirals back as far as the year 1942, when Serafina, who called herself Sara back then, wanted to follow her Jewish friend to Auschwitz. Dževad Karahasan, the most important poetic chronicler of Bosnian history next to Ivo Andric, has never documented the magic and tragedy of his native city in a more inexorable way than he does in this book.

1999, 187 pages
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Dževad Karahasan, born in Duvno/Yugoslavia in 1953, was an author, playwright and essayist. The Siege of Sarajevo is the subject of Dnevnik selidbe (1993), translated into ten languages, of the essay collection entitled Knjiga vrtova (2004) as well as of his novels Šahrijarov prsten (1997) and Sara i Serafina (2000). His works also include the novel Noćno vijeće (2006), Izvjestaji iz tamnog vilajeta (2007), a collection of stories, and Die Schatten der Städte (2010), a collection of essays. Karahasan has received numerous awards, including the Goethe Prize 2020. Dževad Karahasan died on May 19, 2023, in Graz, Austria.

Dževad Karahasan, born in Duvno/Yugoslavia in 1953, was an author, playwright and essayist. The Siege of Sarajevo is the subject of Dnevnik...


OTHER PUBLICATIONS

Introduction to Floating
Year of Publication: 2023
Dževad KarahasanYear of Publication: 2023

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...

Rights sold to:

Italy (Keller Editore)

Diary of an Exodus
Year of Publication: 2021
Dževad KarahasanYear of Publication: 2021

»White with fear and sleeplessness we set out to see what was left of Marijin Dvor.« Once more they have been spared: a piece of shrapnel missed the author and his wife and hit the books instead:...

Rights sold to:

Italy (ADV)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: USA & Canada (Kodansha America), Spanish world rights (Circulo de Lectores / Galaxia Gutenberg), France (Calmann-Lévy), Netherlands (Van Gennep), Czech Republic (Mlada Fronta), Slovenia (Wieser)

A House for the Wearied
Year of Publication: 2019
Dževad KarahasanYear of Publication: 2019

Sarajevo, September 1914. In a newspaper editorial office, at the national bank and in other official locations, letters arrive with considerable delay, often years later. Yet it is not the war...

Rights sold to:

Italy (Keller Editore)

The Solace of the Night Sky
Year of Publication: 2015
Dževad KarahasanYear of Publication: 2015

In Isfahan, capital of the Seljuq Empire, a highly respected man dies unexpectedly. The son of the deceased demands an investigation into the circumstances of his father’s death. Court...

Rights sold to:

Chinese simplex rights (Shanghai Translation Publishing House), Bulgaria (Paradox), Slovenia (Beletrina), Turkey (Iletisim), Greece (Hestia), Part 1: Macedonia (Templum)

The Shadows of Cities
Year of Publication: 2010
Dževad KarahasanYear of Publication: 2010
Karahasan’s poetry of the »storied city« tells about a literature now more at home in the multilingual, asynchronous and multi-dimensional city than ever before in the modern era.


The great Bosnian writer and essayist Dževad Karahasan, rooted in the literary traditions of antiquity and of the Islamic and Christian world, has an understanding of the craft...
Reports from a Dark World
Year of Publication: 2007
Dževad KarahasanYear of Publication: 2007
This reportage from a dark world repeatedly links together seemingly unrelated events in prose that skillfully interweave authenticity and fiction, exposing and illuminating the...
Rights sold to:

Poland (Borderland), Bulgaria (Paradox)

Night Council
Year of Publication: 2005
Dževad KarahasanYear of Publication: 2005
Against the background of recent events Dževad Karahasan tells the story of a man anxious to explore his origins, and who is confronted with the impending war. Night Council is a...
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Anubih), Bulgaria (Paradox), Slovenia (Cankarjeva Založba), Turkey (Apollon)

The Book of Gardens
Year of Publication: 2001
Dževad KarahasanYear of Publication: 2001
The eminent Bosnian author Dževad Karahasan, an expert on both Arabic and western literature and philosophy, attempts to discover connections between cultural traditions whose aesthetic and spiritual riches are in danger of being lost.

Are our earthly gardens merely shadows projected to earth from the Garden of Paradise? Why were the Holy Scriptures of the written religions...

DISCOVER

News
Author Dževad Karahasan died on Mai 19, 2023, at the age of 70.
News
Dževad Karahasan was born on January 25, 1953 in Duvno, Yugoslavia.
News
07.05.2020
This year’s Goethe Prize of the City of Frankfurt is awarded to the Bosnian author Dževad Karahasan.