{"id":1446,"date":"2018-02-10T13:52:06","date_gmt":"2018-02-10T19:52:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lavenderink.org\/site\/?post_type=product&p=1446"},"modified":"2025-08-25T04:31:57","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T09:31:57","slug":"mamasafari","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/www.lavenderink.org\/site\/shop\/mamasafari\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamasafari"},"content":{"rendered":"

Olja Savi\u010devi\u0107<\/a><\/h3>\n

Translated by\u00a0
\nAndrea Jurjevi\u0107<\/a><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

ISBN:\u00a0978-1-944884-38-3 (pbk.)
\n170 Pages: $16.95\u00a0
\nSeptember, 2018
\nOrder from Small Press Distribution<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This collection by poet, novelist and dramatist Olja Savi\u010devi\u0107, one of Croatia’s most important contemporary voices, is the first of her books of poetry to be translated into English, following the critical acclaim for her novel, Adios Cowboy<\/em> (Adio kauboju<\/em>). Mamsafari is a woman’s expedition into contemporary Mediterranean culture, a collection of prose poems that meditates with vivid imagery and narrative on family, identity and politics of the Balkans.<\/p>\n

\u201cMamasafari,\u201d the second section of the book, continues in the vein of observation and political commentary (particularly the problematic history of the poet’s native Balkans), yet this time in a more lyrical manner, and this time with the poet’s eye lovingly scrutinizing and exploring family life. The speaker braids the experiences of being a mother, a lover, and a child, at times playing the three roles at once. This is a journey into what it means to be a woman.<\/p>\n

The third section, \u201cSoundtrack for Blind Passengers,\u201d contains more poeticized and metaphorically-complex work. These poems are thematically varied, and they solidify a sense that Mamasafari<\/em> represents an expedition, as seen from female experience\u2014first an expedition abroad, then among the speaker’s identities, and finally to some truly distant, fictional destinations.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Praise for Olja Savi\u010devi\u0107 and Mamasafari<\/em><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Olja Savi\u010devi\u0107’s writing is savage; whether she is sharpening truths against “35 Years of Lies” or simply recalling a domestic scene where she suddenly unleashes: “Motherhood is self explanatory and useless like fireworks,” her poetry drives the familiar into a state of uncanny. “Why would I eat paper, when I could write on it? So much about that kind of love.” That “kind of love” in Mamasafari<\/em> is\u00a0a hunger that cuts just deep enough to astound.
\n—Megan Burns<\/a>, author of Basic Programming<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Olja Savi\u010devi\u0107’s poems and prose-poems tackle everything from the Devil to Pasolini, blue shoes to bicycles, the Bossa Nova to family portraits, and a precisely rendered sequence on Istanbul. Savi\u010devi\u0107 is like the love-child of Carolyn Forche and Caesar Pavese: she possesses Pavese’s eye for street-life and grit in the cities she travels (both inside and out), and yet she imbues that portraiture with Forche-like notions of the poet as witness. Andrea Jurjevi\u0107’s fine translations wrought in American-inflected-English present a Savi\u010devi\u0107 who captures the rhythm of life that bends beneath the weight of history and isms to find the tiniest details that sing and resist. For, as she tells us: “The butchers will be behind bars, the ground that trembles will grow calm, but the deep satisfaction we call justice won’t come. Still: there’re many pleasures, that’s what’s worth focusing on.”
\n–Sean Thomas Dougherty, author of The Second O of Sorrow<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

These sensual and at times surreal poems are filled with Middle Eastern and Balkan images of minarets, hookah bars, brothels, baklavas and kebobs, so that one would wish to fly to this \u201cmystical land\u201d on a kilim but for the terror and war that haunt the region\u2019s past and seep into the present.
\n\u2014Biljana D. Obradovi\u010d<\/a>, editor of Cat Painters: An Anthology of Contemporary Serbian Poetry<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Olja doesn’t write for the critics. After you read the collection’s first section, in which the speaker spends a month in Istanbul, you will quickly understand why she writes. By observing the colors, scents and sounds, the crowds in this foreign land, the chairs, windows and rooms, inside which she observes herself, observes the process of observation, Olja follows the primal need for writing, gains an understanding, and captures that which is elusive. In her poem “Listanbon,” which is a city that sometimes appears in Olja’s dreams, a fusion of Lisbon and Istanbul that flickers between reality and dream, between life and death, Olja captures the chorus of the street singer under the window: “Dying before death isn’t the hardest thing, it’s wanting to live after that, that’s the hardest, wanting to live after that.” Olja’s poems invoke a conjured city you won’t find in travel books. You might think that as such, this city might mean little to you, except these poems carry impressive descriptions of the physical world, and they brilliantly capture the spirit of a place.
\n— Ivana Bodro\u017ei\u0107<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Olja Savi\u010devi\u0107 again brilliantly integrates prose fragments and reflexive lyric poetry. Let’s cut to the chase: the author has long ago masterfully created her own subgenre, yet this time she has written an unusually strong, touching, beautiful and passionate book, the best one so far. Regardless of how we try to classify these texts\u2014travel-bits, prose poems, lyric panoramas, micro essays, song-stories, or something else\u2014the fact is there are more lyrical, pure-blooded, no-holds-barred poetic and poetically courageous choices than in ninety-nine percent of the Croatian verse production.
\n— Marko Poga\u010dar<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mamasafari<\/em> by the acclaimed writer Olja Savi\u010devi\u0107 is a fantastic poetry collection, devoid of empty ramblings and banality, a book which should not be read because we’d simply like to stay current with contemporary poetry but, simply, because of its pleasures.
\n— Robert Peri\u0161i\u0107<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Praise for Adios, Cowboy<\/i>:<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cIn Dada\u2019s wild amalgam of quest story, social satire, and comic shtick (plus a surreal film-shoot scene featuring cowboys), you won\u2019t catch Savicevic offering tidy diagnoses. You won\u2019t care, thanks to prose that glints like the sea in the distance.\u201d
\n\u2014The Atlantic<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Memory is the present of all remembered events,\u2019 reflects the protagonist of this droll slice-of-life story, expressing the personal sense of stagnation she experiences upon returning to her childhood home in a remote Croatian village. Dada is newly returned from Zagreb to \u2018the Old Settlement,\u2019 hoping to put a pointless love affair behind her and to care for her aging mother, and she finds the routines of the locals and her grown-up childhood friends little changed from how she remembers them\u2026 As depicted by Savi\u010devi\u0107, Dada is a resilient woman whose appreciation of the absurdities of her life allow her to carefully navigate them. Her experiences make for an intimate character study.\u201d
\n\u2014Publisher\u2019s Weekly<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThe publication of this dazzling, funny and deadly serious novel will bring nourishment to readers hungry for the best new European fiction, and to those wondering where the new generation of post-Yugoslav novelists are\u2026 It shines\u2026 with the help of a flawless translation from Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth\u2026 With this novel, which lodges itself in your chest like a friendly bullet, a glorious new European voice has arrived.\u201d
\n\u2014The Guardian<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cSavi\u010devi\u0107, who was born in 1974 and grew up with the war\u2026 belongs to a lost generation. This novel, which appears to be an account of a personal quest, is about so much more\u2026 The humour and sheer anarchy of the action combined with the comic exasperation, unforgettable characters and Dada\u2019s wry acceptance of the way life happens to be, make this subversively appealing novel all the more profound; even, unexpectedly, beautiful.\u201d
\n\u2014The Irish Times<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cSavi\u010devi\u0107 tells her story in highly poetic, sensual language aglow with wondrously incandescent images.\u201d
\n\u2014Berliner Zeitung<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWeaves together past and present in a devastatingly consequential way, full of ghosts, regret, and Dada\u2019s always poignant self-examination\u2026 When the prose lands\u2026 it\u2019s reminiscent of Renata Adler or Lorrie Moore: breathtakingly brilliant with comedy made especially sharp through ubiquitous, underlying tragedy.\u201d
\n\u2014The Rumpus<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cAn accomplished debut novel\u2026 Savi\u010devi\u0107 may employ conventional narrative modes\u2014the detective story, the mock western, the email correspondence\u2014but she always uses them as vehicles to further a subtle sociological inquiry that is woven into the novel\u2019s language itself.\u201d
\n\u2014Words Without Borders<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cA wild ride through the dusty streets of a coastal city in Dalmatia; clouds of memories are stirred up and verbal hot lead fills the air. The dust settles to reveal a subtle and cleverly crafted family story, which revolves around a pervasive past waiting to be addressed.\u201d
\n\u2014Wortlandschaften<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWonderfully direct and breathtakingly vulgar\u2026 This mosaic of memories and the present, jottings and letters, makes a fascinating reading experience full of vivid impressions, sentimental truths and satirical insights into life in all its depravity.\u201d
\n\u2014Blog B\u00fccherwurmloch<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cAdios, Cowboy is not the kind of book that is published every day in Britain or America.\u201d
\n\u2014Globus<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Olja Savi\u010devi\u0107
\ntrans. Andrea Jurjevi\u0107
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