Uhvati zeca (Catch the Rabbit), by Lana Bastašić – Literary fiction
European Union Prize for Literature 2020
Original language/Publisher: Kontrast Publishers (Serbia)
Foreign rights sold: Ed. Nutrimenti (Italian), Picador (UK & Commonwealth) Restless Books (USA & Canada), Actes Sud (France), Fischer (Germany), Meulenhoff (The Netherlands), Navona (Spanish), Edicions del Periscopi (Catalan), Metropolis Media (Hungary), Perseus (Bulgaria), Eksmo (Russia), Ilksatir (Turkey), Sanje (Slovenia).
Full English translation available
Catch the Rabbit is a story about two Bosnian young women and their complicated friendship. Twelve years after they last saw each other, Sara (who has been living in Dublin all these years) receives a phone call from Lejla (her closest friend from childhood) in which Lejla asks Sara to fly to Mostar and help her go on a road trip from Mostar to Vienna in order to find Armin, Lejla's long lost brother. Sara is reluctant to go as she has managed to build a new life in Ireland, away from the ghosts and horrors of the past. But something within her knows she will end up taking a plane…
The journey would prove to be much more than an innocuous reconnecting of old school friends: it is a road to a deeply balkanized "heart of darkness," where Lejla's life was reshaped by strict identity politics and her sense of self was lost together with a single letter from her name. Growing up in a Serbian family, Sara has had all the privileges denied to her best friend and has managed to repress her guilt together with her mother tongue. Now, years later, she has to go down the "rabbit hole" of her language and bear the Colridgean burden of telling the story over and over again. But being the one who tells the story is yet another privilege and Lejla will fight for it until the very last sentence, which will only take them back to the beginning.
Teresa Pütz, acquiring editor at Fischer Verlag (Germany) says about the novel: "I really enjoyed reading this thoughtful and quietly devastating novel about the friendship between two women. The book is rich with memorable scenes and the plot-line of their road trip from Mostar to Vienna propels the narrative along in a tangible way. I think Lana is a talent with a promising writing career on the horizon."
Paloma Sánchez (senior publisher) and Sterre Houweling (editor) from Meulenhoff (Netherlands) say about the novel: “An excellent novel that is as captivating as it is impressive in style and has occupied our minds and conversations at the publishing house now for days. We literally can’t stop talking about how much we loved Uhvati Zeca/Catch the Rabbit. We especially love the very thoughtful portrayal of a confused relationship amongst friends and the protagonist’s own past as well as a very plot driven story. You want to read on and on. It is this combination that captures for us the essence of storytelling.”
Ansa Khan, acquiring editor at Picador (UK), says about the novel: “I loved this brilliant, funny, moving novel. There is something immediately recognizable and affecting about the relationship between these two women; Lana Bastašić is so good on formative female friendship, and excellent on how we put our friends on pedestals and then are surprised when they fall off. The ending is a heart-breaking picture of how indelibly we’re marked by the loss of someone we love. I also found it a striking insight into how the traumas of war – in this case in the former Yugoslavia – echo down the years.”
