12 May / Catch the Rabbit by Lana Bastašić [in Booklist]
Once upon a time, two Bosnian girls arrived at kindergarten with paper-doll selfies. Sara’s mother made hers, garbed in pink and glittery. Lejla’s was blank. “[I]t’s not like I wear the same clothes every day,” she insisted, as if already aware that future incarnations – as Leja, Lela, Lili, Lala – would be necessary to survive. Despite remaining inseparable BFFs in college, their lives diverge, and 12 years pass without contact.
Lejla breaks the silence by calling Sara, who escaped to Dublin. Their strained conversation leaves Sara feeling “dirty with my mother tongue,” yet Lejla’s claim that her 20-years-missing brother is in Vienna convinces Sara to fly to Zagreb, bus to Mostar, pick up Lejla, and road-trip to Vienna. The journey becomes a startling confrontation of memory, boundaries, disappearance, and identities bartered, elided, imagined, and betrayed.
Lana Bastašić’s intense examination of female friendship provides a portal into the tumultuous recent history of the former Yugoslavia. Awarded the 2020 European Union Prize for Literature, Bastašić’s compelling and enlightening first novel arrives in the U.S. in her own agile translation, sure to engage urbane anglophone readers.
Review: “Fiction,” Booklist, May 1, 2021
Readers: Adult
Published: 2018, 2021 (United States)