Ferida Durakovic refused to leave Sarajevo when the bombs began to fall. Having seen her home and library bombed, she invokes in her poems the icons and myths of a troubled people caught between the two dominant religions of Europe. The first English-language collection by one of Bosnia's most promising young poets shows us how when the world is narrowed by guns, one's field of reference widens so much that "everything hurts."
Poetry. Ferida Durakovic has written numerous books and lives in Sarajevo with her husband and four-year-old daughter. During theThird Balkan War, the bookstore that she managed, her parent's flat, and her personal library were all destroyed. Homeless, she stated that, Never have I been so happy to write, to live, to meet people, to eat. I don't have anything complicated in my life, just life and death. I have to choose, and I choose to write. In A War Letter, she writes, The Universe sent darkness to our humble home,/ which is gone now. The letter, and every single/ book,/ and dear things: they all burned like Rome./ But it is just an image! Have a look...
