‘Ivana Sajko’s language is distilled to perfection. It flows and is poetic and hits every nerve. Blazingly relevant writing.’ Clemens Meyer, author of While We Were Dreaming
Publishing 10 October 2025.
‘… every goodbye is a little death, each one clinging tightly to what it leaves behind, and each deserves its own photograph, its own legend, its own notebook …’
A man on a train, propelled from a small town on the south-eastern coast of Europe to Berlin by a gesture of violence. As the wheels turn, his mind roams free in a feverish attempt to trace the genealogy of that violence in his own past and that of Europe as a whole. A man in search of a destination where he can be a stranger – but has that better place since ceased to exist?
Shipwrecks and border pushbacks; epidemics and industrial ruins; a family divided by economic necessity; a brother lost to crime; love and fear and memories of happier times in Berlin – yet through it all runs a silver thread of hope spun by a far-off friend.
A profound novel of contemporary Europe in the stark and furious voice of Dublin Prize-shortlisted Ivana Sajko, powerfully translated by Mima Simić.
‘This concentrated prose hits at the heart of our present-day politics. Ivana Sajko’s novel is both political and deeply personal. With archaic force, it touches the foundations of our existence surrounded by war.’ Verena Auffermann, Deutschlandfunk Kultur
‘A precisely composed, highly political and poetic parable.’ Martina Lisa, kreuzer