Joe Williams hosts a panel of authors from countries belonging to the former Yugoslavia who lived through the dissolution of the country. They discuss how they have sought to make sense of their experiences with the conflict by recreating them in their work, and they share insights on the capacity, and limitations, of literature for processing trauma and constructing healing, transformational narratives for the region. Featuring regional literary lights Ivana Bodrožić from Croatia (author of The Hotel Tito; program coordinator of the Zagreb Book Festival), Slovenian author Goran Vojnović (Southern Scum Go Home; Yugoslavia, My Fatherland) and Bosnian poet and author Faruk Šehić (Quiet Flows the Una, awarded the EU Prize for Literature).

You can also enjoy an excerpt from Yugoslavia, My Fatherland in Trafika Europe 5: Slovenian Interlude, and a full-length conversation with Goran Vojnović and translator Olivia Hellewell on his latest novel in English, The Fig Tree, as the 31 October 2021 episode of The Middle Ground on Trafika Europe Radio (52-minute audio). A generous excerpt from Faruk Šehić’s Quiet Flows the Una appears in Trafika Europe 7.