Ena Katarina Haler was born in 1996 in Osijek, Croatia, and lives in Zagreb. She studied architecture and urban planning in Zagreb. Her debut novel »Nadohvat« (2019) received the Ksaver Šandor Gjalski Award for Best Prose and the Ivan and Josip Kozarac Award for Book of the Year. She works at the Institute of Art History and writes regularly for the weekly newspaper Express on architecture, urban heritage, literature, and film.
© Dennis Butorac
Folio Verlag
Iris and Relja return with their mother to the destroyed house in the borderland near Bosnia. The siblings and the neighbour’s boy, Nino, roam the depopulated village, swim in the river, explore bodies. Iris explores her own and Nino’s. Nino, meanwhile, dreams of her brother Relja. The symbiotic relationship between the three begins to unravel, Nino and Relja leave, while the headstrong Iris stays behind. Bars, truck cabins, back seats of cars. Relentlessly, Iris fights for a self-determined life at the threshold of the new millennium, preserving her emotional integrity in a devastated world. A story of rebellion and self-empowerment by a young woman who must build a future on the ruins left by the fathers.