Ivana Simić Bodrožić Books

Nora is a journalist assigned to do a puff piece on the perpetrator of a crime of passion - a Croatian high school teacher who fell in love with one of her students, a Serb, and is now in prison for having murdered her husband. But Nora herself is the daughter of a man who was murdered years earlier under mysterious circumstances. And she wants, if not to avenge her father, at least to bring to justice whoever committed the crime.

This is a story of hidden gay and trans relationships, the effects of a near-fatal accident, and an oppressed childhood, where Ivana Bodrozic tackles the issues addressed in her previous works - issues of otherness, identity and gender, pain and guilt, injustice and violence. A daughter is paralyzed after a car crash, left without the ability to speak, trapped in a hospital bed, unable to move anything but her eyes. Although she is immobilized, her mind reels, moving through time, her memories a salve and a burden. A son is stuck in a body that he doesn't feel is his own. He endures misperceptions and abuse on the way to becoming who he truly is. A mother who grew up being told she was never good enough, in a world with no place for the desires and choices of women. She carries with her the burden of generations. These three stories run parallel and intertwine. Three voices deepen and give perspective to one another's truth, pain, and struggle to survive.

Ivana Bodrožic's In a Sentimental Mood is emotional, but never woeful, deliberate, yet playful poetry capable of reaching both the highest and deepest registers of expression. From abstract jazz-inspired musings to bedroom intimacies, these poems converse with the idea that being alone is not the worst thing that can happen to a person. To lose your dignity and the dignity of your words—that is the worst thing.

Ivana Bodrozic erzählt davon, wie Krieg zur Normalität wird. Ihr Debüt ist die Geschichte eines jungen Mädchens, das während des Krieges in Kroatien heranwächst, aber nie die Hoffnung verliert. Mit neun Jahren, 1991, muss sie aus Vukovar flüchten. Schon bald ist ihr Vater verschwunden, täglich hofft sie auf eine Nachricht von ihm. Im Lager schließt sie neue Freundschaften und erlebt das, was Pubertät ausmacht. Das Buch ist ein großes Dokument der Selbstbehauptung, voller Witz und Leichtigkeit, ohne falsche Sentimentalität. Mit den Augen von Ivana Bodrozic betrachtet, erscheint die Realität des Krieges in einem neuen Licht.