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Mahmutovic's writing is lucid and beautiful. Told in the first person voice of a young woman coming of age as her country falls into war and hatred, the deceptively simple narrative takes the reader on a journey across landscape, political boundaries, assumptions and emotions. The impact is powerful and evocative, the voices authentic, speaking for themselves free of heavy handed authorial intrusion.
Full of poignancy without a hint of self-pity; truth without a hint of preaching, the novella is a gripping read, a challenging page turner that will establish Mahmutovic as one of the leading writers of his generation.
Adnan Mahmutovic was born in 1974 in Banja Luka, northern Bosnia and moved to Sweden as a refugee in 1993. He lives in Stockholm, where he is finishing a PhD in English literature. Adnan worked as a personal aid to a man in a wheelchair for 11 years. After his friend died, he took the position of a manager for a group of 10 people who take care of a teenager with special needs. He describes himself as "a Bosnian exile in beautiful and calm Sweden, the land whose naked north glistens with green Northern Lights".