Search results for ""Author Faruk Sehic""

Quiet Flows the Una is the story a man trying to overcome the personal trauma caused by the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. Through an induced trance, the main character of the novel takes the reader through three time periods: the hero’s childhood before the war, the battle lines during the war, and his attempt to continue with normal life in a post-conflict society. Through poetic, meditative prose, Šehić attempts to reconstruct the life of a man who is bipolar in nature; being both a veteran and a poet. At times, he manages to pick up the pieces of his life, but at other times it escapes him. With the help of his memories, he uses his mind and strength to look for a way out of the maze in which he is confined, acting as both archivist and chronicler of the past - roles that allow him the opportunity to rebuild everything again. In parallel to this story, the book’s passages on the city next to the river Una take on mythical and dreamlike dimensions. Here, the novel expands into a poetic description of nature, seasons, flora and fauna, as well as childhood memories not yet tainted by all that will happen after 1992. Quiet Flows the Una is a book is dedicated to people who believe in the power and beauty of life in the face of death and mass destruction.

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With this collection of brutal and heart-wrenching stories, the Bosnian writer Faruk Sehic secured his reputation as one of the greatest writers to emerge from the region. A war veteran and a poet, Sehic combines beauty and horror to seduce and surprise the reader; Sehic literally describes the war through the gun sight of an AK-47. His book is brutal, naturalistic, honest and uncompromising; his characters kill and get killed, they rob corpses and homes, they get drunk and get into fights, they parade in front of a mirror wearing a uniform ripped off a dead soldier. There's drugs and alcohol in abundance, and they are--paradoxically--reason's last line of defense.

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'My Rivers' is an event in four cycles: The Loire, The Spree, The Drina and the Beyond the River. The book includes different poetic forms, from long narrative poems to free verse/flash fiction. The style is never overly strict in form, as Sehic always wants this work to be as clear and understandable as possible. It deals with themes of post-war reality and the culture of remembrance in a wider context, along with the tragedy of the Bosnian war seen through larger conflicts and the greater tragedies of the two world wars. The book seeks catharsis, to the extent to which it is possible in a post-conflict society like Bosnia, along with universal themes of intimacy, love, freedom.

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