"A time of polarization, a time when we were called upon to inhale the air of the nation, a time when it mattered who belonged to which ethnic group. But our hero wants to belong to his own, special, rockabilly nation, founded on music, freedom, the freedom of the spirit, the freedom to decide, to choose his clothes, his hairstyle. . ."

-Boris Lijesevic, theatre director of 'Blue Moon', the play

Carli left his mountain village and his past to study agronomy in Zagreb. Failing miserably his commitment to most endeavours is falling into question. Nobody, however, can surpass the time he spends on his hair and his music.

Most days Carli whiles away the hours grooming his pompadour. Even crossing the street, he pays attention to the direction of the wind so that his quiff, his pride and joy, is not displaced. And most evenings he spends with friends in the city's underground clubs from which the sound of rockabilly music echoes through cobbled streets and into the night.

When he meets the red-haired Eli, a street-smart city girl, Carli is thunderstruck, and an unlikely relationship begins. Eli quotes the lyrics of Leonard Cohen and has little time for rockabilly music. She is an A-student, competent. When news of impending fatherhood sparks an existential crisis, Eli is there to keep him from the precipice.

However, the ominous signs of Yugoslavia's instability become more apparent as Carli's downward spiral intensifies. Sinister figures from past decades return to manufacture discontent and the facade of peaceful co-existence begins to crack under the weight of history until a precise moment of witness when the future of a generation and of a country comes to a thunderous halt.

"This story about the disappearance and transformation of the Serbs of Zagreb-a story that the scoundrels would never dare tell, even if Blue Moon were awarded every Croatian literary prize-has been told with unusual care, touching attention and a sense of responsibility; the responsibility of a writer for a story that must be told, no matter the price for telling it."

-Miljenko Jergovic

About the Author

Damir Karakas is an award-winning Croatian author, playwright, musician and journalist. He is the 2021 winner of the prestigious Mesa Selimovic award. Born in 1967 in the remote, mountainous region of Lika, he later studied law and agronomy in Zagreb. During the 1990s he worked as a war reporter from the front lines in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo for national daily newspaper Vecernji list. Blue Moon is his second book to be translated into English.

Ellen Elias-Bursac is an award-winning translator of Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian, who has served as the president of the American Literary Translators' Association. Between 1972 and 1990 she lived in Zagreb and for six years she worked in the English Translation Unit of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands. She is the translator of celebrated authors including Dubravka Ugresic and Dasa Drndic, author of Trieste, and of Karakas' first book to appear in English, Celebration.

Reviews

"What may seem at first glance to be a simple, straightforward love story actually moves at many levels. The author dissects society on the eve of war and transition with a tale that at times surprises with an unexpected gut punch."

-Sven Popovic, Moderna vremena

"As is so often the case with fine books, there is dancing, singing and drinking as the Titanic goes down and while funeral bells are clanging-for whom? For everyone who sees themself in this, in other words for everyone who can hear the bells toll."

-Teofil Pantic, Vreme

"Were things better then, under Tito? Did Yugoslavia have a chance? How much did we lose? And what did we gain by murdering each other and radicalising our already irrational hatred? There are no answers to these questions, so Karakas doesn't ask them. Instead, quite rightly, his novel succeeds in recreating the time pre-catastrophe, the deafening thunderclap which, though beyond our range of hearing, had unimaginable consequences for our psyches. Do you hear it even now? Listen closely."

-Vladimir Arsenic

Reivews of Celebration:

"The translation is exemplary. . . Celebration is an astonishing read reminiscent of Boris Pasternak [and] Alexander Solzhenitsyn . . . With its spirited prose, microscopic attention to character and environment, Karakas leads the reader into the individuals that make up the forces of history."

-Robert Allen Papinchak, Asymptote

"Ellen Elias-Bursac's graceful translation captures the atmosphere of Karakas' writing, the hopefulness as well as the sense of threat . . . the cinematic quality that makes this such a powerful story."

-Antonia Lloyd Jones

"The book can easily be read in a single sitting, but it will burrow into your consciousness . . . As fascism and other belligerent ideologies reassert themselves across the globe, Karakas' novella is both timely and sobering . . . its appearance in English, thanks to Elias-Bursac, is unquestionably a cause for celebration."

-Los Angeles Review of Books

"Every little thing in this book moves, and it will move you . . . The moon and the stars watch along as the trees threaten to strangle Mijo. And all to the tune of birdsong."

-Ena Selimovic, World Literature Today

Awards
Winner of English PEN Award 2025 and Mesa Selimovic Award 2021.



Book Information
ISBN 9781917254267
Author Damir Karakas
Format Paperback
Page Count 112
Imprint Selkies House Limited
Publisher Selkies House Limited