Diary of an Exodus

»White with fear and sleeplessness we set out to see what was left of Marijin Dvor.« Once more they have been spared: a piece of shrapnel missed the author and his wife and hit the books instead: William Faulkner, Nadezhda Mandelstam, Gottfried Keller’s Green Henry. Dževad Karahasan describes life in besieged Sarajevo in short, unforgettable scenes.

A man who steps out of the queue, sits down on a low wall and dies. The evacuation of the Jewish community. The absurd conversation about the hunger and the cold with a French correspondent. Sarcasm, humour, kindness and an impressive intellectual confidence characterise the attitude with which Karahasan writes about everyday life during a war and about the migration of a culturally and religiously polyphonic city into the sphere of the ideal.

The Diary of an Exodus is a permanent testimony of the Siege of Sarajevo – less in the way it documents everyday life but in its intellectual and ethical charisma.

»If there are still remnants of the ›miracle city‹ today, it is also because its inhabitants did not stop guarding its heritage during the siege and in the years since. Karahasan expresses this in a formula: ›The form must be preserved‹. He has succeeded in doing so, but, dignified, he remains silent about the price he paid for it.« Hannes Hintermeier, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»And thus the Sarajevo from before the siege of the Bosnian Serbs and the invasion by tourists has been relocated to an ideal sphere that can only be reached through literature, […] through this Diary of an Exodus.« Tobias Lehmkuhl, Süddeutsche Zeitung

»Reading Karahasan again is more topical than ever in this age of supposedly cemented identities.« Marko Martin, DIE WELT

»His extensive learnedness, his ability to make at least three unexpected, inspiring cross-connections to every topic, and his analytical gaze are apparent on every single one of the nearly two hundred pages.« Freie Presse

»His books are absolutely contemporary and cunningly ageless at the same time.« Deutschlandradio Kultur

»He is one of the great European scholars of our times […] A book that one should have read to understand Europe’s most recent, painful history.« ORF

»Dževad Karahasan ... is the most important chronicler of this siege, in which around 14,000 people died, and one of the most important writers of the former Yugoslavia.« SR2

»I would find it difficult to name my favourite book by Dževad Karahasan … why not Reports from a Dark World or the incomparable Diary of an Exodus?« Ingo Schulze in his laudatory speech, Goethe Prize 2020

»Readers let Dževad Karahasan take them by the hand with great pleasure. The Bosnian novelist and essayist, who grew up with the Quran, well-versed in Goethe and Georg Büchner, appears as a welcome pilot amidst the perils of West-East misunderstandings.« Ilma Rakusa, Neue Zürcher Zeitung