Zagreb, Exit South

by Edo Popović

ISBN: 978-1-932010-09-1

5 ½” x 8 ½”, softcover

176 pages

$12.95

“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

About the Author:

Edo Popović (born in 1957 in Livno, Bosnia and Herzegovina) 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. Visit his website to learn more.

About the Translator:
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.

Read an interview about the translation of Zagreb, Exit South >>