Marić Vesna: Plava ptica

Vesna Marić: Blue Bird

Vesna Marić's autobiographical novel reveals the simple and true perspective of everyone who had to leave their home because their life was directly threatened by the events of the war. The refugee journey from Mostar teenager to British writer Vesna Marić describes how it all really unfolded. Despite the anxiety of that experience, she managed to see all the circumstances through an original humorous lens that makes this book special. Before you is a fundamental book of the emigrant perspective of the generations affected by the war in the 1990s. This reading successfully leads us into a very brave undertaking—to face the personal state of displacement, to objectively compare our own, new life of questionable quality with the ideal standards of an orderly society in which each of us would like to live, as well as in the search for a physical place that we could call home, where we could take a breather, heal our wounds and, with a sigh of relief, move on.



Vesna Marić was born 1976 in Mostar. She left Bosnia and Herzegovina and moved to Great Britain at the age of sixteen. She studied Czech literature at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at UCL in London, after which she worked for the BBC World Service. He writes travel guides for Lonely Planet and journalistic articles for The Guardian and BBC Online. An excerpt from the book The Blue Bird, which was published in the English original in 2009 by the prestigious publisher Granta, received the Penguin Decibel Award for New Prose Voices, and the novel has so far been translated and published in five languages. She won the award for the best short story in The New Philosopher magazine in 2019. Vesna Marić lives between Madrid and London and is finishing a new novel.


'Lunch followed. After that, biscuits and butter were served. Then tea. Real England. They said that this area is called "the Lake District". I like the Lake District, I thought. While we were eating, some of our English hosts approached me and asked me to translate. One of them announced: "In this country, we really appreciate it if people say 'please' when they need something, and respond with 'thank you' when they receive something from someone else." I translated. "We noticed that you Bosnians don't usually say those words, can we ask you to make an effort from now on?" I translated. The Bosnians said: "OK" surprisingly uninterested. An elderly man, visibly enjoying his biscuits and marmalade, said: "Thank you please!" and everyone burst out laughing.'