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Quote by Sasa Stanisic

“FAQ regarding my book were not about my use of commas or how the images went berserk, but about the political situation in Bosnia, about guilt and shame, about victims and perpetrators, about reasons, arguments and beliefs that led to the conflict in the first place, etc. All of this needed and still needs answering and ongoing discussions, but I mostly felt overwhelmed and unqualified to articulate anything worth more than personal experiences of the siege, of fear and refuge - all the things which I wrote about anyway.”

Quote by Sasa Stanisic

Author

Sasa Stanisic is a Serbian-German writer born on March 7, 1978. His works often explore identity, memory, and European history, particularly focusing on the conflicts and changes in the former Yugoslav region. more

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“Something as radical as a war can only be understood (if at all) through the collaboration of journalists, academia, artists and, of course, people.”

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Author:Sasa Stanisic

“By trying to give an artistic approach through my book I stepped unwillingly into other fields. Like a dentist being asked about a throat ache on a much more relevant scale, I was caught in trying to explain what was unexplainable for me. In the end, trying to explain why it was unexplainable finally led to a huge general insecurity in dealing with the subject at all.”

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Author:Sasa Stanisic

“Instead of giving it [war] a rest I continued pursuing more research, talking to more people on the subject as if I was to please this aftermath of the book by knowledge that was more historical and psychological than literary and aesthetical.”

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Author:Sasa Stanisic

“The reason for writing that essay was less a personal agenda than an attempt to explain my unease with the general label of "immigrant literature" after I had read quite a number of reviews (in different countries) involving books written by 'immigrants.'”

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Author:Sasa Stanisic

“It just seemed to me so utterly wrong to credit someone's work just for the fact that this someone migrated from one place to another. We all move. We are all leavers and new beginners at some point, and yes, it is a huge leap from war to peace, from one language to another, from Boston, MA to Joplin, MO.”

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Author:Sasa Stanisic

“Regarding fiction, our concern shouldn't be the author's origin (and of course I am forgetting the sales people right here), because that is actually merely a simplified, almost insulting judgment of the book by its cover - or rather by the name and origin of its author - an act of discrimination if we want to say it in a more provoking way, but at the least an act of ignorance and false empathy.”

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“Europe is not becoming more unified - well, yes, on paper - but not as long as the criteria for so many things (import regulations, border control, visa politics...etc.) are still made in an unjust, unreasonable way.”

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Author:Sasa Stanisic

“Given that the label "immigrant literature" is already established, unavoidable for anyone with a migrant background and used in any given context, I strongly advocate an absurd amount of specification to go along with the label.”

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Author:Sasa Stanisic

“For example, an author whose parents fled a war but he himself was born in the country where they fled to, and that is where he went to school and college before he wrote his first book of poetry in the language of this country - he should be labeled as: "Author whose parents fled a war but he himself was born in the country where they fled to, and that is where he went to school and college before he wrote his first book of poetry in the language of this country."”

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Author:Sasa Stanisic

“I also did a great amount of writing while doing research. It gave me the opportunity to meet and talk to people other than family, but also to explore my own memory deeper by comparing it to the memories of others who were in my home town during, for example, the political transition from socialism to a nationalistic "democracy" or during the bombings.”

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Author:Sasa Stanisic