Trafika Europe 7 - Ukrainian Prayer

Editor’s Welcome

Islands, where he serves as co-editor of Vencil , a Faroese literary magazine. The six poems in this issue are excerpted from Eg eri næstur (I Am Next, 2013).

Faruk Šehić (born in Bihać, former Yugoslavia, 1970) studied veterinary medicine in Zagreb until the outbreak of war in 1992. However, the then 22-year-old voluntarily joined the army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which he led a unit of 130 men. After the war he studied literature and has gone on to be a writer. Literary critics have hailed Šehić as the leader of the ‘mangled generation’ of writers born in 1970s Yugoslavia, and his books have achieved cult status with readers across the region. His collection of short stories Under Pressure (Pod pritiskom, 2004) was awarded the Zoro Verlag Prize. His debut novel Quiet Flows the Una (Knjiga o Uni, 2011) – excerpted here – received the Meša Selimović prize for the best novel published in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Croatia in 2011 and the EU Prize for Literature in 2013. His most recent book is a collection of poetry entitled My Rivers (Moje rijeke, Buybook, 2014). Šehić lives in Sarajevo and works as a columnist and journalist. Quiet Flows the Una is just out from Istros Books.

xviii