writers in residence
In Residence
Zurich, Switzerland
February — June 2021

Lana Bastašić

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Author

Lana Bastašić, born in 1986 in Zagreb, Croatia, to Serbian parents, grew up in Bosnia after the break-up of Yugoslavia and most recently lived for many years in Barcelona. She has so far published two collections of stories and one volume of poetry, for which she has been awarded numerous prizes and scholarships.

Bastašić is the editor of the Catalan literary magazine “Carn de cap” and co-founder of “3+3 sisters”, a project that promotes female authors from the Balkans. She was shortlisted for the NIN Award, Serbia’s most prestigious literary prize, for “Uhvati zeca” (published in German as “Fang den Hasen”). In 2020, Bastašić received the European Union Prize for Literature for Bosnia & Herzegovina. /// As of February 3, 2021

More media on our writers
A Short Passage

Fang den Hasen

«‹Hallo, du.› Nach zwölf Jahren absoluter Stille höre ich wieder ihre Stimme. Sie spricht schnell, als wären wir erst gestern auseinandergegangen, ohne irgendeine Notwendigkeit, die Lücken zu überbrücken, im Wissen, in der Freundschaft, in der Chronologie. Ich kann nur ein einziges Wort sagen: ‹Lejla.›»

— From «Fang den Hasen» (S. Fischer, Frankfurt 2021, translated from the Bosnian by Rebekka Zeinzinger)