Edo Popović

Zagreb, Exit South masterfully illuminates the lives of diverse, colorful characters adrift in postwar Croatia. Through bleary, middle-aged eyes, stymied writer Baba takes readers on an amusing, thought-provoking ride as he circles the streets of Zagreb bemoaning the dying out of domestic beer, Kancheli’s ridiculous musical lighter, and the fear of going home. His wife Vera, facing wrinkles and an alcoholic spouse, discovers that e-mail is cheaper than therapy as she reshapes her life. Reflective insight, biting humor, and life-changing experiences combine to revive hope in the shadows of Zagreb’s city buildings.

For more information: ooligan.zagreb@pdx.edu

ISBN: 978-1-932010-09-1
5 ½” x 8 ½”, softcover
176 pages
$12.95

About the Author

Edo Popović

Born in 1957 in Livno, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Edo Popović studied on the Faculty of Arts in Zagreb, where he received a degree in comparative literature. From 1991 until 2000 he worked as a journalist and his fiction, reviews, reportage, and articles have been published in major magazines, political weeklies, and daily papers. During the war in Croatia, many of his reports from the Croatian and Bosnian fronts appeared in Croatian newspapers. He participated in the war as a soldier and thematized those experiences in the novel Under the Rainbow.

Edo published his first prose in 1978 while he was working as a part–time laborer in Germany and as a tour guide in Greece and Spain. He went on to publish the following prose books: Tattooed Stories (2006, in collaboration with the underground illustrator Igor Hofbauer), The Jack, the Queen, the Moron, the Cop (2005), The Dancer from Blue Bar (2004), Zagreb, Exit South (2003), A Concert for Tequila and Prozac (2002), The Stone Dog (2001), Dream of Yellow Snakes (2000), Midnight Boogie (1987, 2002–the second and refilled edition).

The novel Zagreb, Exit South was translated into German and Slovenian. The novelette Under the Rainbow was completely published in the German magazine Schreibheft, and the novelette Dream of Yellow Snakes was translated into English as well as turned into a stage drama by the Canadian director Danijel Margetić. It was first performed in Spring 2001, in the Reeve Secondary Theatre in Calgary, Alberta. Some of the stories from The Midnight Boogie and Tattooed Stories were translated into English, German, Polish, and Slovenian and published in various magazines. In addition, his prose has appeared in more than a dozen anthologies.

Edo currently lives with his family in Zagreb where he is an editor at the publishing house Ljevak.

About the Translator

Julienne Buŝić

Julienne Buŝić, the translator for The Survival League and Zagreb, Exit South, was born and raised in Oregon and has lived in the Republic of Croatia since 1995. In Croatia, she worked as an adviser in the office of the President until her retirement. Currently, she is a translator, an editor, and the author of the award-winning book of memoirs, Lovers and Madmen, written during her thirteen-year incarceration in an American prison. The memoir is now in its sixth Croatian printing, and a new, expanded English language edition was released in 2006. She has been published in many literary journals, both in the United States (Verbatim, The Gobshite Quarterly) and in Croatia (The Bridge, Kolo, Tema, Aleph). She is currently working on a new book, Living Cells.

In an interview with Ooligan Press, Ms. Buŝić discussed her experiences translating The Survival League and Zagreb, Exit South and her role in bringing the books to the United States.

Q: How did you first discover the writing of Edo Popović and Gordan Nuhanović and how did you become the translator?

A: At the time, I was working on a prison literature project, the translations into Croatian of two American writers who had either published while incarcerated or after their release. Edo Popović and Gordan Nuhanović were both working as journalists covering the project, and that’s how I met both of them. I knew they were award-winning writers, but I didn’t read their work until after we actually started collaborating on the prison project.

Q: Along with being the translator, you were the impetus for bringing the books to Ooligan Press. Can you tell us how that came about and why these books were chosen?

A: I’m originally from Portland, Oregon, and while I was home for Christmas one year, I read about Ooligan Press in the daily newspaper, The Oregonian. I contacted the director, Dennis Stovall, and proposed a joint project between Croatia and Ooligan. And that’s how it all began. Dennis was a wonderful collaborator and the entire Ooligan team was incredible, enthusiastic, and full of great ideas. As for choosing the books, it was sheer chance. To Nuhanović and Popović, I also added another writer, a poet and literary theorist, Dubravka Oraić Tolić, whose work I had read and highly respected.

Q: What were your biggest challenges while translating The Survival League and Zagreb, Exit South? Was there anything about the writing of Popović and Nuhanović that you found particularly difficult to translate into English?

A: Popović’s writing style was not that difficult for me to translate, since it was basically the language I spoke transplanted to Croatia—the urban vocabulary of the 60s, actually— although the action of Edo’s book takes place in the 90s. But I had to be sure I captured the spirit of the text, the specific irony and rootlessness of the post-war generation he writes about. With Gordan, I had a little more trouble because his style is so quirky. He gives a little information, creates an image, and then you have to try to figure out exactly what has happened and why, which gives his writing a texture I find very compelling. Not that it’s inaccessible; it’s not, it’s just incredibly layered.

Q: When translating the books, did you lean toward making the text as close to standard American English as possible or did you try to leave echoes of the Croatian language?

A: I don’t think it’s possible to leave echoes of the Croatian language; after all, the translation is in the English language. What a translator does try to do, though, is duplicate in English the rhythm, sounds, and structure of the Croatian text. It’s never totally on the mark, but some translations come very close to the original text, and some can even be better, though that’s hard for some people to accept. Nabokov, for example, was renowned for his translations as well as for his own writing. Translators have to be artists too, and some, like Nabokov, are considered by others to be greater artists than the authors they’ve translated.

Q: Why should Americans read more translated literature?

A: Because otherwise, they will be insulated from the wonders of a world unknown to them. Though I would suggest that a reader shop around until he finds a translation that really speaks to him, assuming it’s a book that has been widely translated already. Many authors have been neglected because of horrible translations.

Praise

Popović is simply the epitome of the “urban writer…” The best narrator of his generation has achieved literary maturity, and that is great news.
— Slobodan Novak, author of History of Croatian Literature

Zagreb, Exit South is a book of longings, masterfully written testament of the ‘lost generation,’ set in the concrete outskirts of post-war Zagreb, whose inhabitants find themselves strangers to the world. They seem to awake every day trying to flee suffocation. Are they searching for exit from apocalyptical surroundings, or out of themselves is an enigma only the cat, Chombe, can unravel. This book wonderfully describes that, what once was lust, in youth, became longing for life, and as long as there are longings, there is hope.
— Tomica Bajsić, Croatian translator and poet

Zagreb, Exit South brilliantly evokes the great American chroniclers of the city’s darkness: Hubert Selby, of course, but also Nelson Algren and Charles Bukowski. It’s…one of those rare books that keeps tragedy and comedy in perfect balance. A love story from the heart of the city.
— John Williams, author of Temperance Town

By turns darkly hilarious and hilariously dark…Popović’s characters are ordinary people with ordinary problems, and we love them all the more for that.
— Anna Davis, author of Dinner, Melting, and Cheet