For Seka

All that is left is an envelope with a handful of photographs – as well as the fear of her father, the worry for her mother and her brother, and the knots in her chest. In her early twenties, Seka is looking for the traces of her broken family and of her scattered life up to this point. She reconstructs her parents’ journey from Bosnia to Switzerland and asks about the connections, the threads leading to her. On her search, she finds the 1990’s Omarska concentration camp and a letter that leads her to The Hague and Geneva, later to the Bernese Highlands. She notices that ore is mined in Omarska today, as if history, that of an almost-forgotten war in Europe, didn’t exist. Even though the wounds of the past continue to have an effect on the present.

Mina Hava combines historic material, research and reconstruction with personal experiences, losses and fears – and examines what history means to landscapes and bodies. For Seka sensitively describes a young life in which the political and the private are inextricably linked, a story of leaving and being left and the question of what was.

»For Seka is a powerful debut novel about the experiences of a young woman dealing with trauma and loss in the aftermath of the war in Bosnia. ... a captivating and meaningful read by a talented young author.« New Books in German

»In Mina Hava‘s debut, haunting introspection mixes with literate passages, held together by the cool clarity of the narrative tone. ... the effect is captivating.« Tobias Rüther, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»Mina Hava's brilliant novel is a narrative made up of individual fragments of reality. They seem to float in the air like dust particles after an explosion.« Paul Jandl, NZZ Online

»The novel [is characterised by] the laconism and lightness with which Mina Hava establishes herself as a powerful and uncoventional literary voice.« Martina Läubli, NZZ am Sonntag

»Mina Hava masters her expansive subject by breaking it down and arranging it so that it comes together in the process of reading. ... The novel resolves the unclear unknown, the uncanny and the frightening on many levels and leaves a lasting impression.« Cornelia Geissler, Berliner Zeitung

»Already in her debut novel, Mina Hava finds language and form for some of the greatest acts of violence in human history. And that alone is breath-taking.« Miriam Zeh, Deutschlandfunk

»A wonderful, unexpected debut novel that refuses to succumb to any kind of routine until the end.« Moritz Holler, WDR 5

»Mina Hava‘s text on migration poses the urgent questions about personal placing in radical new language ...« Stefan Hüsler, SRF Kultur