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Belladonna daša drndić6/12/2023 ![]() “Souvenirs can’t help here.” And they don’t. “The past is riddled with holes,” she writes. ![]() He tries to push the past away, to “land on a little island of time in which tomorrow does not exist, in which yesterday is buried.”ĭrndić leafs through the horrors of history with a cold unflinching wit. Ban’s memories of Belgrade (which he thought he had left behind) and of Amsterdam (a different world and life) alternate with meditations on hole-ridden time (ebbing away through its perforations), on his measly pension, on growing old and fragile, on the intelligence of rats and the agelessness of lobsters, on deadly nightshade. He sifts through the remnants of his life-his research, books, medical records, photographs-remembering old lovers and friends, the tragedies of WWII, the breakup of Yugoslavia. ![]() Belladonna also carried a tamer name, dog’s cherry, and an almost magical one, fairy plant.Īndreas Ban, a psychologist who no longer psychologizes, a a writer who no longer writes, lives alone in a coastal town in Croatia. Translated from Croatian by Celia Hawkesworthīelladonna: also known as deadly nightshade, devil’s berries, death cherries, beautiful death, devil’s herb, which sounds terrifying and threatening. From the author of the highly acclaimed Trieste, a fierce novel about history, memory, and illness. ![]() Winner of 2018 Warwick Prize for Women in Translationįrom the author of the highly acclaimed Trieste, a fierce novel about history, memory, and illness Belladonna Fiction by Daša Drndić Winner of 2018 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. ![]()
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