Celebration

A Paris Review Book of the Year.

In four fragmentary stories set in the mountainous Lika region of Croatia, Mijo's life unfurls not with the chronology of time but in episodes, each in flow with the textural grain of this remote earth. With sparest of prose, Karakas has crafted an exquisite sense of place and of family within it. The result is among the most powerful modern homages to a landscape and its people.

As an unwilling combatant on the run in "The House", Mijo has not strayed far from home. From his hiding place in the woods above their cabin he observes through the cross hairs of his rifle his beloved wife go about her daily routine. Autumn is advancing and Drenka has agreed that at night it might be safe for his return to the crawl space beneath the house.

In "Dogs" Mijo is a child working on his family's land the day the local authorities pass an edict that all dogs in the valley must be killed. No reason is given. Around the table, his father and mother evaluate a warm life in terms of raw pragmatism, and the journey Mijo decides to make will become his pilgrimage to adulthood.

Mijo arrives at the door of his girlfriend, Drenka, on a day of festivity in the final, eponymous story, "Celebration". The couple plans to walk through summer fields to the revelry in town. With her brother as chaperone, the two lovers lag behind. The contours of the horizon have shifted with the seasons and their direction becomes as uncertain as the events that will unfurl at the festivity awaiting them.

Short-listed for EBRD Literature Prize 2025

"CELEBRATION is a masterpiece of Karakas's work to date, an event in Croatian modern literature." Vijenac;

"Some of the most exciting, innovative, boundary-pushing fiction anywhere in the world." Maya Jaggi, EBRD Jury Chair;

"A book of the year for many Croatian critics, it is one that cries out for translation into other languages." Jonathan Bousfield, Satellite Review;

"The reader's hair will frequently stand on end from pure aesthetic thrill." Miljenko Jergovic;

"A novel of profound meaning and essential literary beauty." Vecernji list;

"Dark intoxicating reading from a literary wizard." Novi list;

"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 translation is exemplary . . . Celebration is an astonishing read reminiscent of Boris Pasternak, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Maylis De Kerangal. With its spirited prose, microscopic attention to character and environment, Karakas leads the reader into the individuals that make up the forces of history, refuses to offer any easy solution to the ravages of fascist-era Croatia and 'all the human bones . . . carried off by beasts for years after the war.'" Asymptote;

"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;

Damir Karakas is an award-winning Croatian author, playwright, musician and journalist. 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. His novels have been translated into French, German, Italian, Czech, Slovak, Macedonian, Slovenian, and Arabic. His plays have been performed across Croatia, Serbia, Germany, Chile and Ivory Coast. Selkies House will publish his novel BLUE MOON in 2025.

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.

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