Publishers Weekly
★ 02/15/2021
In an unnamed Croatian city in 2010, reporter Nora Kirin, the heroine of this searing political thriller from Bodrozic (The Hotel Tito), hopes to expose the city’s sleazy government. Instead, she’s assigned to write a lurid piece about a Croatian high school teacher who murdered her brutal husband, a Croatian war veteran, while having an affair with a student, an ethnic Serb. Nora’s own troubled past distracts her from this task. Her father disappeared in 1991, just before a horrifying massacre of Croats by Serbs. As Nora seeks the truth about his fate, she uncovers heinous instances of immorality throughout a city supposedly promoting “peaceful reintegration” between Croats and Serbs. In her effort to get justice for her father, Nora dooms her own love affair. Bodrozic smoothly integrates Nora’s gripping personal story with, as revealed in a translator’s note, the recent history of Vukovar, the author’s native city. Noir fans won’t want to miss this one. Agent: Diana Matulic, Corto Literary (Croatia). (Apr.)
From the Publisher
"A novel that, as translated, is plainly written but immensely powerful in its portrayal of a damaged society."
—The Irish Times
“In We Trade Our Night for Someone Else’s Day, Ivana Bodrožić takes our most taboo subjects and puts them in a familiar setting, to damning effect.”
—Drago Hedl, multi-award-winning Croatian journalist and crime fiction author
"In an unnamed Croatian city in 2010, reporter Nora Kirin, the heroine of this searing political thriller from Bodrozic (The Hotel Tito), hopes to expose the city’s sleazy government. Instead, she’s assigned to write a lurid piece about a Croatian high school teacher who murdered her brutal husband, a Croatian war veteran, while having an affair with a student, an ethnic Serb. Nora’s own troubled past distracts her from this task. Her father disappeared in 1991, just before a horrifying massacre of Croats by Serbs. As Nora seeks the truth about his fate, she uncovers heinous instances of immorality throughout a city supposedly promoting “peaceful reintegration” between Croats and Serbs. In her effort to get justice for her father, Nora dooms her own love affair. Bodrozic smoothly integrates Nora’s gripping personal story with, as revealed in a translator’s note, the recent history of Vukovar, the author’s native city. Noir fans won’t want to miss this one."
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Bodrozic, mediated by Ellen Elias-Bursac’s assured translation, chronicles what a country chooses to remember, and what it consciously forgets, with confidence and grace."
—Sarah Weinman, New York Times Book Review
"Ivana Bodrožić’s newly translated novel of trauma, vengeance, and despair is as noir as they come...Bleak, devastating, and lyrical in equal measures."
—Molly Odintz, CrimeReads
"The effect of the war on the divided city runs through the novel like a half-healed wound — the conflict recent enough to have touched the lives of everyone the journalist encounters, yet sufficiently distant to mean people are desperate to forget it. The dichotomy is perfectly captured by the description of death pits, containing the corpses of countless victims, that are now covered by tarmac laid down to make a parking lot for a new shopping mall. The writing is elliptical, poetic and shimmering — at least in the excellent translation by Ellen Elias-Bursac." —Andrew Rosenheim, The Spectator (UK)
