They were young lads, they waited for me more than an hour in the other people’s apartment in order to check if my face really resembled an angel’s on paintings by old masters as I had written back in the days when angels were legally outlawed This was a completely new police in the spirit of the new times […]
I’m turning over a new leaf, I’ve got my health back I’ll write about love again, I murmur to myself while the chock-full bus tilts dangerously on a curve like a blue flower on its too-frail stem I will spend this day looking at façades freshly painted in shiny Austrian ochre around Zrinjevac Park I will fill my eyes […]
From the start we should have informed Red Riding Hood all about the wolf Later the hunter turned out not to have a mandate to use firearms The fairy tale in this case let us down tr. W. Browne
Bosnian art portrays the war as terrifying, painful, and profoundly disfiguring; at the same time, it offers a sharp critique of the “deeply concerned” political community and the organisations that so casually draw lines on maps. Borders, queues for water, the cold-blooded killing of adults and children. These are all present in the Bosnian works selected below. For Ukrainians, […]
Excerpts from a lecture at the Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina In post-war communities, urban spaces often become places where the past and the future intersect. Destroyed infrastructure, abandoned buildings, and neglected public spaces became blank canvases for subcultures that use them for creative and political expression. Graffiti, street art, skateboarding, and other forms of urban culture often occupy […]
Spirit of Bosnia has been publishing quarterly online since 2006. Each issue disseminates scholarly research and writing on the history, politics, and literature of Bosnia-Herzegovina in order to honor and preserve the long-standing traditions of social and civil order that created Bosnia’s heritage. The journal publishes works of fiction and non-fiction reflective of this mission. According to Google Analytics, the journal receives […]
Here are the testimonies of women’s mass struggle, the testimonies of a generation for which there was no dilemma. The revolution has its songs, its flag, and its blood. “All for the front.” “Woman Today”, number 275 Our task is to preserve and make known historical evidence about the work and activities of the Antifascist Front of Women of Bosnia […]
From THE LOST REVOLUTION – WOMEN’S ANTIFASCIST FRONT BETWEEN MYTH AND FORGETTING, edited by: Andreja Dugandžić and Tijana Okić Introduction Early debates on the invisibility of women in Yugoslav history were initiated as late as the mid-1980s, and the greatest contribution to the promotion and strengthening of feminist historical research of autonomous women’s organisations and associations was made by […]
“Mum, Bela says she is going to send some money for Eid. Dragan gave it her specially to send to you.” “Tell her I don’t give a shit about his money. I’m supposed to use Serb money to sacrifice a ram, now, am I? Not a chance. Not if it means never being able to sacrifice again. Tell her he […]
I came to live with Dunja, my uncle’s daughter, when I was six years old, after my mum died. When my stepfather’s new wife and her son wanted to send me to an orphanage a month after mum’s death, I ran away from home. On the bottom of the base of the telephone, my neighbour found Dunja’s father’s number which […]
The contribution of partizanke, or female partisan fighters, to the Yugoslav liberation war was unprecedented in occupied Europe: official statistics of the socialist period report 100,000 women fighting as partisans, and two million participating in various ways to the support of the National Liberation Movement. Approximately 25,000 women died in battle, 40,000 were wounded, and 2,000 of them acquired […]
First publication Why does the white mouse grant luck? I have found out. And I’ll tell you. When you are born, life deals you a hand. Better or worse. You are born a healthy or sick baby, small or large, rich or poor, white or a bit darker. That’s how it works. If your parents are wealthy or at least […]
We come from a land of misfortune where literature, art and music are not needed Apart from woeful folk poetry, now and then a verse like an anemic decoration for national tyrants So our poems do not have the expected charm nor attractiveness, nor spleen. Not even the sound of melancholy from the rain drumming on the roof We have […]
The planet that has lost its soul and mind Writes about its end, which is to be On December 21, 2012. But that, unfortunately, will not happen. Yet still, this world must end sometime When all people will disappear in fire or ice, All living things, animals and plants And there won’t be any Noah’s Ark. All books will turn […]
Never say things can’t be worse They can Never say things were never worse They were If people didn’t reach the peak of the hill they touched the bottom of the abyss Where what has befallen you is a bagatelle Chocolate calls for raspberries pick them The homeland calls for sons bear them Your lover longs for shackles forge them […]
Health-giving sounds of wind and waves with a lovely view of Lake Ontario and the nuclear plant in Oswego. In the distance it looks like a steamboat that leaves behind its smoke signals that imperceptibly merge into the herd of clouds. I lie motionless, highly productive. Excellent working conditions in deep shade; beneath the spreading branches of a maple, I […]
“Nowhere else than in America do they pay so well for reading poems.” wrote Miłosz in his poem “Texas.” The next line, “Next to my signature I put the date 2000.” scarcely seems needed since the first one sounds so timeless. Yet my modest experience doesn’t fit that, and I’m unsure what “the Poor B.B.” would have said, while the […]
Everything is just like this photograph — cloudy. Fogs are frequent here, pictures fogged up. Before my impressions take shape, and words fit together, the fog lifts and broadens my horizons. Everything is just like this photograph, only one doesn’t hear the flapping of wings of the flock that flies away past the lens. But the sound has slipped under […]
December 5, 2025 Submitted to the House Foreign Affairs Committee (the “Committee”) Chairman, Ranking Member, and Members of the Committee: Thank you for the opportunity to submit this statement for the record in response to several points raised during the Committee’s December 2, 2025 Western Balkans Hearing (the “Hearing”), particularly those presented by Mr. Max Primorac. While we appreciate the […]
Among contemporary Bosnian writers whose biography and literary work had been indelibly marked by the 1992-1995 war of independence, Sarajevo-born author Karim Zaimović (1971-1995) is without any doubt one of the most representative, considering his tragic fate and the peculiarities of his narrative production. The son of famed painter Muhamed (1938-2011) Karim was among Sarajevo’s leading young intellectuals during the […]