the strange and fleeting mood of a very specific time and place
Plus novels about a country in transformation
Love notes from Siel is a weekly newsletter from Siel, who’s currently traveling around. If you love it, subscribe for free.
Dear friend —
Did you know Croatia is split in two parts? There’s the big northern side, then twelve miles of Bosnia and Herzegovina, then the tiny southern side that contains Dubrovnik, aka the Pearl of the Adriatic.
A couple weeks ago, I crossed these twelve miles, going through the first border where a Croatian guy in a toll booth checked my passport on one side, then a Bosnia-Herzegovinan guy on the other side — then the whole process again in reverse as I went into the southern part of Croatia.
What I’ve learned most through travel is that I know very little about the world — both its past and present. Croatia was once part of the Roman empire, which is why the city of Split has famous Roman ruins. But from there Croatia’s history gets super complicated: There’s the arrival of the Croats (origins not totally known) who become catholicized and form a duchy, a brief union with Hungary, a period of rule under Venice, an invasion from the Ottomans, a communist phase around WWII after which Croatia becomes part of Yugoslavia, then the war of independence starting in 1991, at which point Croatia becomes its own country again.
All of those changes came with a lot of violence that led many Croatians to leave the country, though walking around tourist-friendly Split today you wouldn’t know this difficult history. Split’s a beautiful town with fantastic weather, pebbly beaches, great seafood, and of course the well-preserved fourth century Diocletian Palace which today serves as a living museum, filled with bustling restaurants and shops.
Pick up a few works of contemporary Croatian literature, though, and you’ll learn more of what’s behind all that beauty. Oh, the places you can go, and the books you’ll read!
Love,
Siel
Our Man in Iraq by Robert Perisic (Catapult, 2013)
Toni is a cocksure yuppie-hipster type who works at a newspaper in post-socialist Zagreb. He’s trying to get a foothold in the new world order — that is to say, he’s embraced life as a social-climbing capitalist — and to this end, he spends his time getting drinks with his artsy friends, looking for a better apartment with his aspiring actress girlfriend, and scheming for ways to best the competing newspaper in town. Problems begin when Toni hires a reporter and sends him to Iraq — because this reporter happens to be a cousin of Toni’s and suffers from PTSD to boot.
What to do when said cousin starts sending long, unhinged emails from a war zone? Toni starts playing ghostwriter, rewriting the missives into something publishable. Then the cousin disappears and the shit really hits the fan. Robert’s plot’s hilarious and his prose full of sexy one-liners, but what really makes this novel is the way it gets into the nitty gritty of how Croatians think, feel, and act at the beginning of the aughts — when the country’s finally coming out of its violent history of war and starting to try to redefine itself to the world. Read it if you like snide satires that capture the strange and fleeting mood of a very specific time and place.
The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna (Grove, 2014)
One school. One bakery. One bar where everyone stops by to get their town gossip. That’s how tiny Gost is, this fictional Croatian village where local handyman Duro’s lived all his life. One day, a British family moves into town, upsetting the delicate traditions of the place by hiring Duro to fix up their fixer-upper home — a home that, unknown to these expats, houses unforgotten histories — of love won and lost, friendships made and destroyed, people who disappeared or were disappeared during the dark years of war.
This is a moody novel about an outwardly stoic man storing a knotted web of emotions, a seemingly placid village hiding generations of brutal secrets. It’s about the claustrophobia and nostalgia and simplicity and richness of spending an entire life in the same little town. The local person who won’t leave their beloved town despite its sad memories and lack of opportunity — this person seems to be the favored protagonist in contemporary fiction from Croatia, which perhaps isn’t surprising considering the country’s long period of post-war violence and repeated political upheavals. Read it if you like small town stories, slow plot reveals, and the painful pleasure unique to unrequited love.
The First Rule of Swimming by Courtney Angela Brkic (Little, Brown, 2013)
Magdalena is from Rosmarina, a fictional island that’s part of the nonfictional Croatia. Though the country suffered through some very violent decades during and after World War II — and though many relatives decamped to the U.S. as a result — Magdalena sticks with her island home and its old school traditions until, one day, she finds out her artsy sister Jadranka’s gone missing in New York. Magdalena gets on a plane to look for her — and in the process starts unraveling a whole bunch of family secrets kept under wraps for decades.
This is a family that could have been tight-knit but got fractured by the covert brutalities of the war. There’s the man who cut off all contact with his relatives to ensure his, and their, survival. There’s the woman who, to protect her brother’s life, slept with a high-powered official, thereby ending her marriage. And then there’s the daughter born from that painful assignation —
For those curious about the history of Croatia, this novel won’t serve as a factual guide, as dates, major political upheavals, and regime changes remain purposefully blurry in this story. Instead, the focus is put on the people who wanted to live small, quiet lives but got pulled into political turmoil despite themselves. Read it if you love intergenerational sagas, intense sisterly bonds, sad conundrums, and happy endings.
Once a month, I share book recommendations. Shape it by recommending a read!
Three links you might love:
How to marry a fictional character. “Accepting his feelings was hard at first. But life with Miku, he argues, has advantages over being with a human partner: She’s always there for him, she’ll never betray him, and he’ll never have to see her get ill or die.”
What won’t make you happy in a relationship. “People compete ferociously for mates with qualities that do not increase one’s chance of romantic happiness.”
Five members of Congress share their abortion experiences. “I’ll never forget that. It was a back-alley clinic. But the doctor was a really good doctor; he was kind.”
Thank you for the suggestions! Both sets of my grandparents came to this country from Croatia and I am guilty of never reading a Croatian book. Will check these out. (I love that one is a claustrophobic small town and the other has a Magdalena character!)