Name: Balkanalije: odraščanje v času tranzicij
Price: 24 EUR
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ISBN: 9789612840464

Balkanalia (Growing Up in Times of Transition)

Balkanalije: odraščanje v času tranzicij

Samira Kentrić

Genre:: Graphic novel
Year of publication:: 2015
Number of pages:: 150
Rights sold:: Bulgaria (Paradox), Germany (Jacoby & Stuart), Ukraine (Vydavnytstvo)
Available reading materials:: English pdf, German pdf

Balkanalia, Growing Up in Times of Transition is an autobiographical graphic novel. The author, an artist, is the daughter of a shepherd and a carpet weaver who traded their rural Bosnian, Muslim surroundings for an urban Slovenian, Catholic setting and became internal migrants in a country that celebrated the working class above all. Kentrić’s beautifully illustrated coming-of-age story follows the daughter of an immigrant working class family during the bloody break-up of socialist Yugoslavia. In this story, nothing is ordinary in an ordinary child’s life. The girl’s homeland falls apart, yet its remains are the only solid elements of a future worth striving for. The words of the immigrant child make it obvious that her sense of belonging is not tied to place. She belongs to people, ideas and ideals, so home can be anywhere… or nowhere.

Two media, separate but whole, intrinsically joined and enriching each other. A story of horizons, war, home, principles and family, told in an original and honest voice.

MGIP International Book Award 2015

German Academy for Children’s and Young Adult Literature Book of the Month February 2022

The author weaves the internal world with real events, family history with national history, realism, surrealism, symbolism, popular culture, celebrities, and various ideologies, using all this to create a bizarre collage full of unusual figures. The narration is driven by numerous intentional paradoxes, fun excesses, brutal passages, unerotic nudity and oxymora.

Mladina
In Balkanalia, we are mostly faced by sepia-hued full-page illustrations complemented by brief written notes. These, however, are not merely there to illustrate the illustrations, as the illustrations don’t just illustrate the text – each medium has a voice of its own and speaks of what it’s able to. We must not forget, after all, that this is an intimate autobiography with a social focus.

Koridor

Also by Samira Kentrić

Letter to Adna

Pismo Adni

Samira Kentrić

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