Croatia’s first president, Franjo Tudjman, replaced the Yugoslav word for “passport,” pasoš, with the Croatian term putovnica (p. 62) as part of a sweeping language reform following the Croatian secession from Yugoslavia in 1991; the introduction of the word putovnica has come to symbolize the political and cultural transition from Communism.
The late-night TV show Slikom na sliku (p. 71) ran from 1991 to 1996 on Zagreb television, and offered a digest of war-related news. Because it often showed footage taken at the various fronts, people searching for missing loved ones watched it just in case they might spot a familiar face in the footage.
The Intercontinental (p. 94) was the most luxurious hotel in Zagreb when it first opened in the 1970s. During the war, displaced persons were housed in hotels all over Croatia, including the Intercontinental, now a part of the Westin hotel chain.
“Bolje biti pijan nego star” (p. 95) (Better to be drunk than old) is a line from a song by the Bosnian band Plavi Orkestar.
Djordje Balašević (p. 103) is a singer known for his folk-rock ballads. He enjoys a widespread following throughout Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, and Montenegro. The narrator’s brother mutters about Chetnik music because Balašević is a Serb. The Chetniks were a military group that backed the ousted Serbian king during the Second World War. The term continues to be used as a derogatory epithet for Serbs, particularly Serbian combatants.
The Ustasha were a fighting force constituted by the Independent State of Croatia, a Nazi puppet state, during the Second World War. The term continues to be used as a derogatory epithet for Croats, particularly Croatian combatants.
The Serbo-Croatian Dictionary of Differences (p. 105). The prize the narrator received was a volume published in 1991 describing the differences in vocabulary between the Serbian and Croatian languages.
The quibbles over the Croatian flag (p. 134) refer to a controversy from the summer of 1991, just a few months before the Vukovar siege began. The flag’s design included a shield containing a red-and-white checkerboard symbol long used in Croatian insignia. During the Second World War, the checkerboard on the shield started first with a white square, followed by a red square. While some insisted on starting the checkerboard on the new flag with a red square, in order to distance the 1990s flag from that of 1940s fascism, others championed the “white square first.” The checkerboard shield on Croatia’s flag today begins with a red square.
“A šta da radim kad odu prijatelji moji” (p. 141) (And what will I do when my friends go away) is a line from a song by the band Azra.
Haustor (p. 155) was a popular Zagreb band in the 1970s and ’80s. The word refers to the street entrance to an apartment building. The closest we have to it in United States cities is a back alley, the realm of trash cans and feral cats.
The identifications (p. 163) were the process of identifying the remains of bodies exhumed from various sites in and around Vukovar, including the site of the Ovčara massacre.
A note on the Vukovar atrocities: Three trials were held to address the Vukovar atrocities at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague (where I worked for six years) but none of these has satisfactorily plumbed what happened there. During the first Vukovar trial, the town’s mayor—who makes a brief appearance in the novel (p. 135)—committed suicide while in the Hague prison before his verdict was read. The second was the trial of three Yugoslav People’s Army officers who organized the Ovčara massacre described in the novel, but many feel justice was not served: the trial was poorly run. The defendant in the third trial died of cancer before his trial could reach completion.
Ellen Elias-Bursać
Boston, January 2017
IVANA BODROŽIĆ was born in Vukovar in 1982 where she lived until the Yugoslav wars started in 1991 when she then moved to Kumrovec where she stayed with her family at a hotel for displaced persons. She studied at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. In 2005, she published her first poetry collection, entitled Prvi korak u tamu (The First Step into Darkness). Her first novel Hotel Zagorje (The Hotel Tito) was published in 2010, receiving high praise from both critics and audiences and becoming a Croatian bestseller. She has since published her second poetry collection Prijelaz za divlje životinje (A Crossing for Wild Animals) and a short story collection 100% pamuk (100% Cotton), which has also won a regional award. Her most recent novel, the political thriller Hole, has sparked controversy and curiosity among Croatian readers.
ELLEN ELIAS-BURSAĆ is a translator of fiction and non-fiction from Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian. Her translation of David Albahari’s novel Götz and Meyer won the 2006 ALTA National Translation Award. She taught for ten years in the Harvard University Slavic Department, worked as a language reviser at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, and is a contributing editor to the online journal Asymptote. Her book Translating Evidence and Interpreting Testimony at a War Crimes Tribunal was given the Mary Zirin Prize in 2015.
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