Praise for Catch the Rabbit:
“Bastašić’s EU Prize–winning debut follows a Yugoslav-born woman’s stunning Alice in Wonderland–style journey through Bosnia after returning home…. As the magnetic Lejla and Sara grow older, Sara’s identity becomes so wrapped up in Lejla’s that their personalities feed on each other…. Like twin Alices, their wonderland is both terrifying and enlightening, from the white rabbit Sara steals to cement her relationship with Lejla to a deep descent into the catacombs…. The narrative reaches a greatly satisfying climax, built on themes of rediscovering the past, memories, women’s friendships, language, and identity. This unforgettable tour de force surprises at every turn.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“Lana Bastašić’s novel of two young women plunging into post-war Bosnia like two Alices into Wonderland is smart, energetic, passionate, announcing a major talent.”
—Aleksandar Hemon, author of The Lazarus Project
“In a deeply layered study of language, identity, and the costs of war, translator/writer Sara returns from Dublin to Bosnia to help childhood friend Lejla find her missing brother, which ends up with the two women on a road trip assessing their friendship as well. Penetrating and immediate; a European Union Prize winner.”
—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal, Best World Literature of 2021
“[Bastašić’s] Sara is a ferociously satisfying narrator, and though the subject of this book has already been adduced as some kind of Ferrante friendship X-ray, that shortchanges Bastašić’s skill. The heart of the novel is a braiding of time and love.”
—Sasha Frere-Jones, 4Columns
\“Catch the Rabbit, the spectacular debut novel from the Yugoslavian-born Lana Bastašić, uses these quieter consequences of the war and its aftermath to bolster a fantastically genuine yet gently fantastical story of female friendship…. Bastašić, who also translated the book into English, is a glorious writer, approaching even familiar emotions with a unique vibrancy, and if Catch the Rabbit simply followed Sara and Lejla as they drove from, say, Minneapolis to St. Louis, it would still be well worth your time.”
—Cory Oldweiler, Minneapolis Star Tribune
“With razor-sharp images and a compelling, engaging, yet complex narrative voice, Bastašić's brilliant debut novel explores the stickiness of national identity through the story of a fractured friendship and a classic quest to recapture something that was lost.”
—Josh Cook, Porter Square Books (Cambridge, MA)
“The pleasure of Catch the Rabbit lies in the way Bastašić fuses delicate scenes from a passionate friendship between girls with surreal elements that convey unspoken pains and tender aggressions. As in the best examples of magical realism, the unreal feels true here…. Catch the Rabbit is a funny story, fast and gripping despite its diversions, filled with observations of Bosnian society that are both tender and incisive.”
—Irina Dumitrescu, Los Angeles Review of Books
“Bastašić wrestles questions of obligation and understanding into one woman’s deeply personal reckoning. . . . It’s a story of how a person can misunderstand her friend and herself and then be completely wrecked and rebuilt as she grows to a new understanding of her world. Prepare to be split in two. WOW!”
—Chris Lee, Boswell Book Company (Milwaukee, WI)
“This intense, dreamlike, gorgeously-realized descent into history and memory is deserving of its Ferrante comparisons.”
—Dan Sheehan, Literary Hub - 38 Novels You Need to Read This Summer
“Bastašić’s intense examination of female friendship provides a portal into the tumultuous recent history of the former Yugoslavia. Awarded the 2020 European Union Prize for Literature, Bastašić’s compelling and enlightening first novel arrives in the US in her own agile translation, sure to engage urbane anglophone readers.”
—Terry Hong, Booklist
“Lana Bastašić . . . possesses a truly authentic narrative voice. Her storytelling is both mature and energetic, and she has set a very high literary standard with this first novel.”
—Dubravka Ugrešić, author of The Age of Skin
2021-03-17
A Yugoslav-born writer’s debut novel is a tale of fraught female friendship.
Translated from Serbo-Croatian to English by Bastašić herself, this tale explores the relationship of Sara and Lejla, childhood friends who grew up amid the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia. Twelve years after their last interaction, Sara—who now lives in Dublin—receives an urgent phone call from her friend and returns to Bosnia to help Lejla find her exiled brother, Armin. Sara narrates the story as a marginally fictionalized tale of her reunion with the reckless Lejla: “I am the one telling the story. I can do whatever I want with [Lejla]. She can’t do anything. She is three hits on the keyboard.” The two friends journey together to Vienna to search for Lejla’s brother, reconstructing their shared past and reconciling their differing memories of childhood events as they go. Lejla always pushed Sara beyond her comfort zone, and she resists easy characterization on the page. “Even now,” Sara says, “within this text, I can almost feel her fidget.” The bookish Sara has always defined herself in contrast to the wild Lejla, even when the contrast exists entirely in her own mind. Their friendship was important but also damaging to Sara because of the way she internalized this comparison. She refers to Lejla’s “subtle violence” and the ways Lejla influenced her behavior. It becomes clear that her youthful perception of this influence may not be entirely accurate. As the two travel north, Sara has to reconcile her memories (and her desire to fit them into a narrative) with the reality of adult Lejla. As children, Sara relied on Lejla as an ally: “She transformed two separate individuals into the two of us, something ours, indivisible, strong, and sinewy, spiteful before the whole universe,” yet after 12 years she is confronted with how they’ve grown up, apart.
A moving exploration of how perspective characterizes friendship, sometimes to a fault.
