Jurica Pavičić won Prix Le Point du Polar européen for 'The Red Water'

Jurica Pavičić is this year’s winner of the Prix Le Point du Polar européen 2021 for his crime novel “The Red Water”. This French literary prize established in 2003 by the weekly magazine Le Point is awarded each year for the best crime or thriller novel by a European author in French or a French translation. Jury includes renowned French authors and journalists: Jean-Louis Debré, Hannelore Cayre, Jacques Dupont, Irène Frain, René Fregni, Julie Malaure, Christophe Ono-dit-Biot, and François Pirola.

Pavičić will receive the award at Quais du Polar Festival in Lyon, on Friday, July 2nd, 2021. 

“The Red Water” was translated by Olivier Lannuzel and published as “L'Eau rouge” by Agullo éditions earlier this year with amazing press from French media, including riveting reviews in Le Mond and Liberation. A Croatian bestseller, originally published in 2017 by Profil, it received the Ksaver Šandor Gjalski and Fric Award and was among the finalist of Tportal and Meša Selimović Award for the best novel of the year. 

Both a crime novel and a family saga, “The Red Water” chronicles a search for a seventeen-year-old girl that lasted for almost three decades. The police search yields no results, and the surrounding political events, the collapse of a state, social change, and war, overshadow her disappearance which falls into oblivion. The only ones still looking for her are her closest family: father, mother, and twin brother. Pavičić masterfully intertwined a tragic family story, the obsessive and persistent need to find answers, with a dramatic political shift, in an intricate portrayal of a society caught in a fundamental and painful transition.  

 

Sonja Manojlović-linkovi

Crirical Mass

(in CROATIAN ENGLISH, FRENCH)
- elektronic edition of the book of selected poems 1965–2002 Meet Lilith (in Croatian)
www.elektronickeknjige.com
- So What If I Live Unskillfully/ Pa što, ako nevješto živim/ (in English)
http://blesok-shop.mk/en/poetry/622-so-what-if-i-live-unskillfully-9789989595110.html
- Pa što, ako nevješto živim (in Croatian)
http://blesok-shop.mk/en/poetry/620-pa-što-ako-nevješto-živim-9789989595103.html
- Une humaine/Čovječica (in French)
http://blesok-shop.mk/en/poetry/621-une-humaine-9789989595097.html
- Čovječica (in Croatian)
http://blesok-shop.mk/en/poetry/619-čovječica-9789989595080.html
- poems in CROATIAN, ENGLISH, FRENCH, GERMAN:
www.lyrikline.org
 

Daša Drndić among the 12 winners of PEN Translates Awards

Twelve books from 11 countries and 11 languages have won English PEN’s flagship translation awards, and Canzone di Guerra by Daša Drndić (August 10, 1946, Zagreb  - June 5, 2018, Rijeka) joined this stellar list! UK edition published by Istros Books was translated by the renowned Celia Hawkesworth, who already worked on several, award-winning translations of Daša Drndić’s works. As usual, books are selected based on outstanding literary quality, and "they represent some of the most exciting literature in translation arriving into the UK market", concluded Will Forrester, translation and international manager at English PEN.

So far, 12 award-winning books featured on International Booker Prize longlists, while Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World (Pushkin Press), supported by PEN Translates, was shortlisted for the 2021 prize. 
 

The PEN Translates award winners in full:

• Behind the Sun by Bushra Al-Maqtari, translated from the Arabic by Sawad Hussain (Tilted Axis Press). Country of origin: Yemen.
• Voices of the Nakba: The Making of an Archive by Diana Allan, translated from the Arabic by Hoda Adra (Pluto Press). Country of origin: Canada.
• Canzone di Guerra by Daša Drndić, translated from the Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth (Istros Books). Country of origin: UK.
• Our Dead Skin by Natalia Garcia Freire, translated from the Spanish by Victor Meadowcroft (Oneworld Publications). Country of origin: Ecuador.
• Strega by Johanne Lykke Holm, translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel (Lolli Editions). Country of origin: Denmark.
• The Bankruptcy by Júlia Lopes de Almeida, translated from the Portuguese by Cintia Kozonoi Vezzani and Jason Rhys Parry (UCL Press). Country of origin: Brazil.
• A Soldier's Song by Dónall Mac Amhlaigh, translated from the Irish by Mícheál Ó hAodha (Parthian Books). Country of origin: Ireland.
• End of August by Yu Miri, translated from the Japanese by Morgan Giles (Tilted Axis Press). Country of origin: Japan.
• Kolobok, translated from the Russian by Sian Valis (Fontanka). Country of origin: Russia.
• Things I Didn't Throw Out by Marcin Wicha, translated from the Polish by Marta Dziurosz (Daunt Books Publishing). Country of origin: Poland.
• Flowers of Lhasa by Tsering Yangkyi, translated from the Tibetan by Christopher Peacock (Balestier Press). Country of origin: China.
• Cocoon by Zhang Yueran, translated from the Chinese by Jeremy Tiang (World Editions). Country of origin: China.

Krzysztof Cieślik, Rzeczpospolita

With his novel Wilimowski, Jergović confirms two things – that he is the most important contemporary Balkan writer and that the Polish people are not the one who speak best of the Polish soul.

 

Jurica Pavičić awarded with Prix Transfuge for his novel 'The Red Water'

“Transfuge”, the French montly culture magazine has announced the 2021 laureates of the eponymous literary prize. The winner of Best Foreign Thriller is the Croatian author Jurica Pavičić, for his novel “The Red Water”, published in French by Agullo éditions and translated by Olivier Lannunzel. This is the second French literary recognition for “The Red Water” in just a few months upon publication: this July, its author was awarded the Prix Le Point du Polar européen 2021.

There are 13 categories of the Prix Transfuge, among which are Best Novel in French, Best Debut Novel and Best European Novel. This year, the prize for the Best Novel in French was given to two authors, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr ("La plus secrète mémoire des hommes", Éditions Philippe Rey) and Alain Guiraudie ("Rabalaïre", POL).

 

Sonja Manojlović-sample translation

Poems translated by Dinko Telećan (3) and Damir Šodan (6)


IMPERSONAL LIAISONS
(BEZLIČNE VEZE)

Marching in place
he does not walk toward me,
across the light-bearing needles
swaying in powerful water
A bed and a table, shadows that crawl up,
glittering books
What game is this, I wonder
First a promise
then a gaze that is also a touch,
and better yet nothing at all
He gives impersonally, imperiously,
and doesn’t ask for anything in return
For he leans forward without delay,
and pulls my heart out bare handed
in an absent ecstasy
So it has been, and so it shall be,
I am not afraid of big words

But you, tiny toothed dragon child, a recipient of the gift,
sit still
How pale are your nostrils!

Their flame cannot harm me
Let go of my hand,
it is Sunday, the day when I take my parents
into nowhere


BUT THIS IS NOT ALLOWED
(A TO SE NE SMIJE)

You smile, even when there’s no one to talk to,
with your eyes, at the open space, at the volcano crater,
at a human face that needs to be loved

but not at their market squares, nor
at the shadowy places
where things and people lose their names
and where fluttering shadows smile over human shadows
You walk through the city, look at their eyes,
but this is not allowed
You break the door down and enter, your mouth smiles on its own
doing its job, as always – let us infuriate the weak!
For the lower jaw is willing and eager
Since when do you know that, from a whisper, a concealed smile?
A feeling that precedes the word
is exhausted immediately
You do not speak, it is not in the words,
an infant tossed into the air


AN ORDINARY, MOST ORDINARY ENCHANTRESS
(OBIČNA, NAJOBIČNIJA ČAROBNICA)

Everything is lit up, everything can be seen,
but once there was darkness for our hearts
and we walked through it silently,
just as the elf wanted us to
What he was giving , I no longer know,
I took what I could,
the child has not been hushed up, I love, I don’t love,
it still can be heard

through the pedicle of night,
climbers have light bodies, I will climb,
live in airy houses,
eat light food,
slide through the corridor of familial icons
with my teeth sunken into the fast and the fine,
for I do not complain, I do not seek
except in the waking state,
an ordinary, most ordinary
enchantress

 

 

SO WHAT IF I LIVE UNSKILLFULLY
(PA, ŠTO, AKO NEVJEŠTO ŽIVIM)

So what if I live unskillfully,
if I stagger
mutilated to a thousand eyes
Until late at night I classify tiny little nightingales, almost killed
I open and open the screens of distance within them
What if I want to breathe, to eat
where there is nourishing soup of air and books
at which I will sit
lean my chin on my palm
until my hand withers
and my eyeslids confirm
So what if I take only the books from you
mouth for our kiss


THERE'S WEREWOLF IN THE WINDOWS
(VUKODLAK NA PROZORU)

She wouldn't let me get into the house
I drum upon the wide door
The forest is spinning all around
The girl is sitting in there
and she's calling out
from behind her small triangle face:
There's werewolf outside!
I won't open! I can't!

Thus, the werewolf is out in the garden with me
we eat live rubies like strawberries
He hangs upside down upon a tree
Washes my linen in the rock
and his back is fast and strong

We go and turn
and she watches and watches


IN A DARK CHAMBER
(U TAMNOJ KOMORI)

But that's not what your mother said about you
Polaroid star.
Stupor is a thought of death
putting out senses in a moment's cocoon
lightening up their silence.
Didn't she say
Put your faith in the bed's shallow relief,
in a dark chamber, the illuminator's trade?
Yes, I sort of remember her,
but I don't know who you are.
You'll fall asleep, you'll slip into an answer.
But, I am not human, one does not notice I'm not alive,
I don't look after myself,
I don't cradle anything alive in my arms,
I borrow, I sell, I spend it all,
I am a glittering mutant in a common darkness,
and you, who are you, do you rearrange things?
For the sake of that burnt gold of youth only.


I REMEMBER EVERYTHING
(SVEGA SE SJEĆAM)

If that's everything, I remember everything.
.ouses thrown around amidst the inaudible,
A child's speech, crowded, obsessed,

in the garden, amongst strawberries,
life's bites,
do you then pardon the simplest of things?

Those eyes so narrow!
It hasn't been forgotten!

All that I love will be killed!
I can read it from my mother's palm,
The dryness of the world, words walking over the water,
That's the kind of city this is, ruined into objects.
One after another,
that's left of home.


DRAWING ONESELF IS THE EASIEST
(NAJLAKŠE JE SEBE NACRTATI)

Drawing oneself is the easiest!
En route, definitely en route,
as a dot a condensed circle.
Neither rain, nor sun, or air,
all that is full is empty here.
The reflection
of houses upon one's back.
But you won't calm down souls with a word
nor with a bang upon the door,
everyone darts out of the house at once.
Only the eye remains, round, petrified,
illuminated.
That's the easiest thing to draw,
the smile we need
a blazing wheel, a prayer'r mill
to grind and grind down what's already been ground
until it turns red hot white.
It's clear then,
tomorrow I will be available for love
but not today.


WHAT US MEANS
(Što znači mi)

I float in amber
hidden from the sun, from a beastly morning giggle
in thin gravity
dreaming of edible colours, the crimson of your heart
an android's gleam, the feast of manly and womwnly limbs
When I enter this house
the table is already set, princes and prinsesses flee
and in a twinkle of an eye, if they still don't know who they are,
I find out what us means.
 

Piotr Bratkowski, Newsweek

The world created by Jergović is a landscape just before the apocalypse. Wilimowski is quite possibly the wisest book I read in the past few months. The book that best speaks about the world today, in the strict sense.

 

Nina Obuljen Koržinek, Minister of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, presented Croatian – literature.hr project

Dr. sc. Nina Obuljen Koržinek, Minister of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, participated in The Conference of Ambassadors, Consuls General and Military Attachés of the Republic of Croatia organized by the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, Minister of Culture and Media, where she presented the Croatian-literature.hr project, a website designed to promote Croatian literature abroad.

Minister Obuljen Koržinek emphasized Croatian-literature.hr as a key platform for encouraging the translation of works by Croatian authors as well as their publication and promotion, especially when taking into consideration a reduced scope of what is seen as cultural diplomacy.

Furthermore, let us mentioned again that The Croatian Government declared the year 2021 the Year of Reading. A reflection of a measure in the Action Plan of the 2017 National Strategy to Promote Reading, it has also been motivated by the pandemic and the decreased possibility of organizing and participating in cultural events.
 


More photographs here.
 

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