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Vesna Maric

Vesna Maric was born in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 1976 and left at sixteen as part of a convoy of refugees. She went on to work for the BBC World Service and now writes Lonely Planet travel guides, translates literary fiction and non-fiction from Croatian into English, and writes a variety of journalism for publications including The Guardian. Maric's memoir, Bluebird, was published by Granta in 2009, and was longlisted for The Orwell Prize; her first novel, The President Shop, was published by Sandorf Passage in 2021.

from A Cat at the End of the World

By Robert Perišić and Vesna Maric

It’s hard to find historical fiction that accurately captures the worldview and mindset of the people depicted—and exceedingly rare to encounter characters whose lives and thoughts feel expansive, rather than subtractive, in the remote past. Croatian writer Robert Perišić’s latest novel, A Cat at the End of the World, transports the reader to ancient Syracuse, and then to a colonial outpost in the Adriatic. The protagonist Kalia, servant to a wealthy family and object of torment by the scion Pigras, is accompanied by a cat named Miu and shown the first glimmer of care by a woman named Menda. In this excerpt, Perišić shows how a cat's ungovernability can undo a hierarchy.

from The President Shop

By Vesna Maric

Mona is sprawled across the park sofa. She can see the wisp of a cloud threaded into the blue of the sky. She can see the tree branches moving. The silver birch leaves shimmer like coins.

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The Brooklyn Rail

JUNE 2023

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