FEATURED BOOKS
CORTO LITERARY’S 2021 LEADING LITERARY TITLE
In the vein of majestic works such as Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides or Margaret Atwood’s prose, the power of this novel lies in the ability of genuine literature to reshape the suppressed using it as a vehicle of personal and collective change.
Ivana Bodrožić’ new novel tells a story of being locked in: socially, domestically and intimately, told through three different perspectives. It questions our matrilineal family legacies and points to the unbreakable bond between our personal freedoms, human dignity and social circumstances, and does so with empathy, its most powerful weapon, breaking the chains and unlocking lives, concealed family relations and forbidden love stories.
„This complex novel questions how body and sex we’re born with constrict us, how they can turn into a cage that society builds around one’s identity. A novel dedicated to unfreedom, the price that one pays in pursuit of the freedom – a high price of otherness – written with the nuanced psychological insight and the sensibility of an exceptional author. “
Slavenka Drakulić, author of S.: A Novel about the Balkans
SONS AND DAUGHTERS
Author: Ivana Bodrožić
Pages: 264
Publication: Corto Literary / Hermes, October 2020
Translation rights sold
Serbia – Orfelin
World English – Seven Stories Press
Italy – Sellerio
AN IDYLLIC MEDITERRANEAN CITY AS A BACKDROP FOR TUMULTUOUS YEARS AHEAD OF WWII
Split, aka Dreams and Backdrops, transports us to 1936 to Split, a port city with a tumultuous political past ever since the emperor Diocletian built himself a palace there – standing to this day – and from Dalmatia ruled the entire Roman Empire.
While the old continent is gripped by the electric atmosphere of uncertainty in the dawn of a new conflict, a body of a fisherman is found in Split port. Thus begins a riveting crime investigation, involving fascists and Nazi film crews, Jewish emigrants on the run, and colorful local characters. Part thriller, part romance, part historical novel, Split paints a rich picture of a fascinating moment in history. The language, the atmosphere, and its characters bring a resemblance to Elena Ferrante because Split is similar to Naples, but also to the writings of the crime sovereigns Donna Leona and Andrea Camilleri, and literary memoir novels such as Stefan Zweig’s Yesterday’s World. Several critics also think it is reminiscent of German exile literature of the 1930s. Last but not least, it’s a love letter to a town that was always seen as a character, even outside the realm of literature: on these pages, you can taste, feel and smell the Mediterranean.
SPLIT aka DREAMS AND BACKDROPS
Author: Alida Bremer
Pages: 182
Original publication: Jung und Jung, 2021
Translation rights sold
World English – Amazon Crossing
Croatia – Fraktura
