CELEBRATION

Damir Karakaš

Translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursać

Shortlisted, EBRD Prize

Best Books of the Year, The Paris Review

“An astonishing read reminiscent of Boris Pasternak, Alexander Solzhenitsyn . . . With its spirited prose, microscopic attention to character and environment, Karakaš leads the reader into the individuals that make up the forces of history.”—Asymptote

“Dark, intoxicating reading from a literary wizard.”—Novi list

“CELEBRATION is a masterpiece of Karakaš’s work to date, an event in Croatian modern literature.”—Vijenac

“A book of the year for many Croatian critics, it is one that cries out for translation into other languages.”—Jonathan Bousfield, Satellite Review

“The reader’s hair will frequently stand on end from pure aesthetic thrill.” —Miljenko Jergović

“A novel of profound meaning and essential literary beauty.”—Večernji list

“A dark, intoxicating read by a literary wizard.”—Novi list

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Damir Karakaš is an award-winning Croatian author, playwright, musician, and journalist. Born in 1967 in the remote region of Lika he later studied law and agronomy in Zagreb and during the 1990s worked as a war reporter from the front lines in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo for national daily newspaper Večernji list. His novels have been translated into French, German, Italian, Czech, Slovak, Macedonian, Slovenian, and Arabic. His plays have been performed across Croatia, Serbia, Germany, Chile and Ivory Coast, and his short story collection “Kino Lika” has been adapted for film. Selkies House published his novel BLUE MOON in 2025.

Ellen Elias-Bursać is an award-winning translator of Croatian, Bosnia and Serbian who has served as the president of the American Literary Translators’ Association. Between 1972 and 1990 she lived in Zagreb and for six years worked in the English Translation Unit of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague, Netherlands.