Catching the Memories: Exilic Experience and (Post–)Yugoslav Past in the Novel 'Catch the Rabbit' by Lana Bastašić

• In Event: Away from Home: Memories and Echoes of Yugoslavia in Post-Yugoslav Prose Portraying Exile

Abstract

The paper analyzes the novel Catch the Rabbit (2018) by Bosnian and Serbian author Lana Bastašić, focusing on how it explores the practices of private and public memory of the past, connecting these to the exilic experience of the narrator and protagonist, Sara. Through the use of metaliterary elements, the novel highlights the constructive nature of Sara’s memory of her personal and family history during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, while also examining how post-Yugoslav societies construct memories of Yugoslavia and challenging the way (Western) Europe shapes its self-image by burying uncomfortable historical truths beneath a discourse of order and civilization. Ultimately, the novel suggests that literary memory holds a privileged status, offering its own remembrance of Yugoslavia and its collapse, as well as the female friendship that serves as a lens through which history is refracted.

Author

• Aleksandra Petrović, Inst for Literature and Arts (Serbia)