Audiobook Celebration introduces the life story of Mijo, a soldier in the Nazi-allied Ustaša force, who has returned to his village at the end of the war. He is hiding in the woods, watching as the soldiers who want him dead return again and again, searching his house and disturbing his wife and children. If he can just wait long enough, he naively believes, the atrocities of the war and his own involvement in it will be forgotten, and he can have what he really wants - a quiet life of a farmer living with his family in peace. As a listener, one wonders how did Mijo even become the man we encounter? By facing poverty? Enduring heartbreak? Nurturing ignorance? 

The author Damir Karakaš was a war reporter who witnessed the horrors of the breakup of Yugoslavia firsthand. In this evocative prose he examines the recent history of an unsettled Croatian region of Lika, contrasting the beauty of nature against the failings of people. Celebration, translated by the incomparable Ellen Elias-Bursać, traces a dark path: from hapless individual to world-changing catastrophe - in search of a way to break the cycle of political violence.

Celebration has been adapted into a film directed by Bruno Anković under the mentorship of the Polish Oscar winner Pawel Pawlikowski and will debut at the 2024 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic.

Damir Karakaš is an awarded - almost to say celebrated - Croatian author, born in 1967 in the village of Plašćica, Lika, a Croatian region known for strong winters, remoteness, and beautiful mountains. For a few years he worked in Zagreb and Split as a journalist, reporting from the front lines of the war in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. From 2001 through 2007 he lived in Bordeaux and Paris where he supported himself by playing the accordion. He is the father of three daughters and currently lives in Zagreb. Karakaš is one of the most respected writers in Croatia and the former Yugoslavia. He has published novels, short story collections, and a travelog. His novels have been translated into ten languages, including the first translation of a work of Croatian literature into Arabic. 

First Croatian edition: Proslava © OceanMore, Zagreb, 2019.

English edition published by arrangement with Two Lines Press.

Publication of this audiobook was cofunded by the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia.