Bosnian writer Amila Kahrović-Posavljak will present her third novel published by Buybook at this year's Bookstan. We talked with the author about the novel itself and its creation, but also about literature, reading and other interesting topics.
Interviewed by: Matej Vrebac
You wrote your new book, Skin Scribbles , published by Buybook, between 2020 and 2022, in the midst of the pandemic and the world's dissolution into a new (non)normality. Did writing come naturally in those moments, was it life-saving to a certain extent?
I had the idea of this novel for a long time, the writing came after I finished Derived from Spines . I wrote at irregular intervals and restlessly. I don't know if I could call the act of writing this novel at the time of the pandemic a saving act. On the one hand, there is certainly that kind of healing moment in writing. On the other hand, the world I lived in while writing was so brutal that the surrounding so-called real world, that strange horizon of what is visible around us, seemed like a nursery rhyme compared to the images I lived with while writing.
Skriptaji koke is a novel that evokes in the reader the feeling from the title itself, simultaneously causing pleasure in reading and discomfort in the stomach. The reason for this is the traumatic experience that is at the core of the plot itself. You write about sexual violence as a war strategy, you only portray ontological evil in literature, which is not an easy task at all. How did you come to this topic or did it choose you?
I don't know how to explain it, I had to write this novel. I want it to remain because I believe that literature is the best form of memory that, despite announcements about the disappearance and death of the book, remains long behind us. There is something infinitely painful, silent and terrible in the whole story. I don't really know how to explain it other than that I had to write this story. Anything else I say would be too fake, artificial and dishonest.
Foča recently marked the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence against Women in War. How far have we as a society come in terms of confronting, supporting, and satisfying victims when the perpetrators of these (crimes) are still walking free?
Nikoliko. As long as war criminals sit in politics, municipalities, police, schools and elsewhere, as long as they are even celebrated and recognized citizens, as long as we live the results of genocide and ethnic cleansing with the entire arsenal of associated crimes, we as a society are in a terrible problem. In that sense, we need to stop lying and playing political correctness. Political correctness with crime and its results is a subtle form of complicity. In fact, more vile than subtle. Therefore, I must admit that I do not understand the mantra about the so-called essential things for citizens to which we should turn and forget everything that happened. Is there anything more essential than clearing up the crimes, their politics and the ideology that inspired and constructed them.
The issue of focalization, or narrative perspective, in the novel is very interesting because the protagonist's narrative voice separates and separates from the subject herself and divides into two points of view. How did you come up with this narrative strategy? Is it a consequence of bringing the traumatic experience closer?
I was interested in the moment of dissociation – the one that is seen and the one that is not seen. Normally, I am interested in invisible mechanisms in everything, and here I tried to touch on the unprecedented destruction of the world.
Why is the motif of music and string instruments in Škriptaj kože opposed to the depiction of the complete dehumanization of the human being?
I don't know if I can answer precisely. Actually, I didn't even perceive it in the way of opposition between art and dehumanization. Maybe it came as a secondary effect of the novel. And where did those two come from? Well, sometimes I just feel the need to write about something. In Derived from the Spine, my main character wanted to be a painter, here the main protagonist of the novel is a musician. It is possible that there is a kind of counterpoint in what you asked. On the one hand, an attempt to design the world with sounds. On the other hand, reducing the human being to nothing. In addition, after quite a bit of maturing of the motif and carrying the story inside, one day I simply had an imaginary persona - my heroine and her violin. The moment I could embrace her whole and literally see her in the apartment where it all began, it was clear to me that I had a story.
Almost no name is mentioned anywhere in the novel. We are left with vague names of the protagonist, the characters, the army, the place, and yet everything is so allusive and clear without the procedure of direct labeling. Why did you decide on this procedure?
Because, beyond the thesis of the banality of evil, I was also interested in another dimension of evil. I am terribly intrigued by the narrative that the soldiers and paramilitaries who committed evil were some so-called ordinary people who were allegedly seduced by ideology, and so, having been seduced, they stumbled and committed some evil. Let's say that this is a narrative that has been in circulation quite a bit since the war. Beyond the rather trite story about the collectivizations and non-collectivizations of guilt (as much superficiality as can fit into these phrases), I was interested in how a criminal ideology falls on fertile ground in people. I was interested in how the power given by that abnormal sense of belonging and hereditary power awakens something pharaonic in a person, or how it gives an encouraging pat on the demon in a human being. There are testimonies of evil in which neighbors also participated. I was interested in the moment when an anonymous so-called ordinary person becomes a criminal, an accomplice, an accomplice, or even an observer. I was interested, in other words, in the very heart of evil.
In your work, there is a noticeable preoccupation with the 1990s and the traumatic experience due to the events of the war, which is also a characteristic of an entire generation of domestic writers. I notice gradations and maturation from the first novel, Death's Children , through Derived from Spines to the last one. Do you think that a certain writing maturity is needed to write about certain topics?
Each topic requires a certain writing maturity. Everything can be written in a banal or mature way. There is no subject that should not be approached maturely, if something is to be grasped. And that maturity, for me, implies several things. First, reading and the love of reading. Second, the ability, not to say the power, of immersion, which is usually very exhausting. Thirdly, the commitment to the story in the sense that it develops for a long time before it begins to be written. Fourth, a critical and thorough reading of the written text. Fifth, not to rush because it is not necessary to publish a book every year. Sixth, not to go after pomodars, pomodars narratives or anti-narratives, some kind of activism and the like. When writing, there is only a human being and a story to be written. Nothing more. That is why I believe that solitude is also necessary and that it contains a part of dedication that is essentially necessary for maturity. Therefore, if you are already asking about my personal experience, when I write I am not going anywhere. No round tables, meetings, sections, gatherings, awareness raising and other things. All I have to say is what I write. Nothing more.
Admittedly, to be honest, I hardly participate in any public and mass activities anyway because I mostly have some other, it seems to me a little more internal, life.
Critics have so far interpreted the endings of your previous two novels as open-ended and given them the possibility of being rewritten, but it seems that this will not be possible with the new novel. What do you think about that?
I find that point of view interesting. For example, I was once asked about the novel Izvedene iz kicmi (Derived from Spines) whether there would be a sequel. Although the characters are still alive in my imagination, I don't know. You can't just say that and I wouldn't play around with it. As for Škriptaj kože (Skin Scribbles) , the ending is neither open nor closed, but a third instance of ending. After all, isn't the very term open ending fundamentally paradoxical?
Literature has the power to give a voice to the marginalized and those whose voices we can no longer hear, but it is not omnipotent. What are the real reaches and limits of literature?
In this world, visible and accessible to us, nothing is omnipotent. Everything is fragile, mortal, prone to disappearing and rotting. And you are right about the power of literature, it is able to open up worlds that we don't even know exist. I examine the reach and real limits of literature with each new piece of writing. I don't know them either, sometimes I just feel them, like in the dark. Because there is a lot that we don't see and don't know, and we shouldn't play with it.
The theme of this year's Bookstan is "Imaginary Balkans", following the thoughts and works of Maria Todorova. To what extent is the Balkans imaginary today and for whom, and what is its real picture?
I am quite familiar with the work of Marija Todorova. She has clearly contextualized her concept of the imaginary Balkans in principle. That is why it is important to know the context. However, if we look at her thinking in a broader sense, we can clearly see how the Balkans, in the plural, are opening up before us. And not only in terms of perception and narrative, but also in terms of mere facts.
You received the "Mak Dizdar" award in 2016 for the collection of poems from Koščica , but you are better known to the audience as a prose writer. Do you publish poetry? Where did the poetess disappear, or rather: where did she hide?
I don't publish poetry because I believe it requires a different kind of commitment than prose. I'm currently writing some poetry, actually I've been writing for a long time, but it's slower, different and has its own rhythm. The poetess hid behind prose.
What do you like to read? What books have you read recently that left a strong impression on you that you would recommend them to others?
I read all the time and everything. In the past I have been very dedicated to reading Sufi literature, here I am primarily thinking of the interesting Ilahinama of Feridudin Attar and the incredibly interesting work of Nizamija, Majnun and Leyla, which has something so intriguing, substantial and, as expected, far from the banalization of this motif that is unfortunately common today. There is something endlessly fascinating about these worlds of deep and wide spirituality. While researching, I also read a lot of theoretical literature on genocide and Balkan literature. In fact, there is so much that I have read recently, as well as what I would recommend, that it would probably require an additional conversation, the topic of which would be only and exclusively books.