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A literary gem from a master of language, a hybrid of novel, essay, and diary fragments, it deals with the burdens of life in the 20th century – from personal family history to the collective traumas of Bosnia and Europe.
It begins with the disappearance of precious manuscripts from a Sarajevo apartment in Grbavica during the war of the 1990s, when the author was exiled, and fragments of surviving texts become the basis for the reconstruction of what was lost. Lovrenović weaves a web of past, present and future: he tells the story of the Bosnian Franciscans and Silver Bosnia, his father's disappearance in the maelstrom of wars, major historical events (Ustasha terror, World War II, Siege of Sarajevo) and small destinies – widows stigmatized by Ustashaism, sons suffering in the shadow of violence.
By contrasting reality and fiction, the author shows how literature can reconstruct the world: diary entries complement each other, revealing that what has "disappeared" – people, manuscripts, identities – is a special form of tragedy, between life and death. The novel is a magnificent edifice of empathy and irony, where Bosnia is reflected in a European mirror, and writing becomes an act of resistance to oblivion. Winner of the Meša Selimović Award in 2014.
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