Every Time We Say Goodbye (Biblioasis International Translation Series #54) [9781771966887]

Overview

"A very remarkable book. It has been a long time since I’ve wanted to proselytize about a new book as much as I do about Ivana Sajko’s Every Time We Say Goodbye . . . It’s formally and narratively thrilling, a very slim novel that conveys a whole pressurized life. The translation, by Mima Simić, is extraordinary."—Garth Greenwell, author of Small Rain

A soliloquy of self-examination, upheaval, loss, hope, disillusionment, ambition and failure—Ivana Sajko paints a portrait of an intellectual at a crossroads.

A man on a train, propelled from a small town on the south-eastern coast of Europe to Berlin. As the wheels turn, his mind feverishly clacks along, tracing his own past—and that of Europe—to a moment of violence he must flee, moving him further and farther away from the one person he loves.

Shipwrecks and border pushbacks; epidemics and industrial ruins; a family separated 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. Every Time We Say Goodbye is an extended soliloquy of self-examination, upheaval, loss, hope, disillusionment, ambition, and failure, and is a profoundly stark and furious novel.