Daša Drndić

Daša Drndić

Daša Drndić (1946-2018) wrote Trieste—“splendid, absorbing” (The New York Times)—shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and Belladonna—“one of the strangest and strongest books” (TLS)— winner of the 2018 Warwick Prize, and EEG–“a masterpiece” (Joshua Cohen). She also wrote plays, criticism, radio plays, and documentaries.

Battle Songs

Fiction by Daša Drndić

Translated from the Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth

In the 1990s, the unnamed narrator of Battle Songs leaves Yugoslavia with her daughter Sara for Toronto to start a new life. They, along with other refugees, encounter a new country but not a new home. Book editors sell hot dogs, mathematicians struggle to get by on social security, violinists hawk cheap goods on the street. Years after arriving in Canada, when she thinks no one can hear her, Sara still sings in the shower: What can we do to make things better, what can we do to make things better, la-la-la-la.…
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Doppelgänger

Fiction by Daša Drndić

Translated from the Croatian by S.D. Curtis Celia Hawkesworth

Longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2019, a swift, biting novel from the late Croatian master, Daša Drndić. Two elderly people, Artur and Isabella, meet and have a passionate sexual encounter on New Year’s Eve. Details of the lives of Artur, a retired Yugoslav army captain, and Isabella, a Holocaust survivor, are listed in police dossiers. As they fight loneliness and aging, they take comfort in small things: for Artur, a collection of 274 hats; for Isabella, a family of garden gnomes who live in her apartment.…
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EEG

Fiction by Daša Drndić

Translated from the Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth

In this breathtaking final work, Daša Drndić’s fearless voice reaches new heights. Andreas Ban’s suicide attempt has failed. Though very ill, he still finds the will to tap on the glass of history to summon those imprisoned within. Mercilessly, he dissects society and his environment, shunning all favors as he goes after the evils and hidden secrets of our times. History remembers the names of the perpetrators, not the victims—Ban remembers and honors the lost.…
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Belladonna

Fiction by Daša Drndić

Translated from the Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth

Belladonna: also known as deadly nightshade, devil’s berries, death cherries, beautiful death, devil’s herb, which sounds terrifying and threatening. Belladonna also carried a tamer name, dog’s cherry, and an almost magical one, fairy plant. Andreas Ban, a psychologist who no longer psychologizes, a a writer who no longer writes, lives alone in a coastal town in Croatia. His body is failing him. He sifts through the remnants of his life—his research, books, medical records, photographs—remembering old lovers and friends, the tragedies of WWII, the breakup of Yugoslavia.…
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Drndić’s formidable intelligence and Homeric intention cannot help but thrill and exalt.
—Dustin Illingworth, The Paris Review
Drndić interweaves fiction, reality, history, and memory to terrific effect, producing unforgettable meditations on love and loss, the insanity of war and the legacy of human cruelty.
—Lucy Popescu, The White Review
Her writing glows with an incendiary bleakness worthy of Beckett.
—Boyd Tonkin, The Arts Desk
One of the most electrifying prose writers of our time.
The Hudson Review
Drndić’s formidable intelligence and Homeric intention cannot help but thrill and exalt.
—Dustin Illingworth, The Paris Review Daily
Her incisive skill and radical style render potentially grim reading compulsive. She was a voice of–and for–our times.
Times Literary Supplement
Drndić cultivates a visionary art of memory. She rescues the names, and the lives, of the lost. Her writing glows with an incendiary bleakness worthy of Beckett.
—Boyd Tonkin, The Arts Desk
Daša Drndić was incapable of writing a sentence that was not forceful, fierce or funny–or all three simultaneously.
The Guardian
Drndić has in her own way composed an astonishment that extracts light from darkness.
The Jewish Daily Forward
Drndić is writing to witness and to make the pain stick. Even at their most lurid, her sentences remain coldly dignified.
New York Times Book Review
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