Divlje guske

In a village in Srijem in the 1970s, where Croats, Serbs, Bosnians, Rusyns, Hungarians, Germans and Roma live together after the Second World War, two little girls not yet old enough for school tell their childhood as a single 'we'. Family is no refuge for them: Baba, their pious grandmother, adores them but hates their Bosnian mother, their parents quarrel and fight, and their father escapes into hunting and later ends up in hospital. Through their blunt, funny and unsettling eyes we see poverty and illness, a drunken uncle, visits to the Roma settlement, a stolen transistor radio, animals that pay with their lives, a move to a new house and family secrets nobody mentions, with a growing sense that something worse lies underneath.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

233 pages in the original

Genres

Family, Coming of age (assigned by AI)

Set in

Croatia, 1970s

First published

2018 by Hena com

Author's age

49 when first published

ISBN

9789532592139 (original)