Ivana Bodrožić’s latest novel, Sons, Daughters, is an astounding work of empathy and a masterful depiction of the deepest inwardness, tracing the always-shifting definitions of what we can and cannot say to one another. With three individuals at its center—a paralyzed but completely aware young woman, a transgender son, and a mother who has been irrevocably marked by the cruelties of patriarchal society—Bodrožić arranges the various storylines in a delicate and constellating balance, showing how singular truths in one’s own life can come to be mirrored in another, seemingly opposite, existence. Translated with precise lyricism by Ellen Elias-Bursać, Sons, Daughters is due out from Seven Stories Press in March, and we were proud to feature an especially moving excerpt in our Winter 2024 issue. Now, in this following interview, translator and author speak to one another about the psychological labyrinths inlaid throughout this narrative, and the writer’s role in bringing invisible consciousnesses to the forefront.
Ellen Elias-Bursać (EEB): Sons, Daughters examines the inner lives of three protagonists: Lucija, Dorian, and Lucija’s mother—all on a profoundly intimate and personal level. What was it like for you to create the dynamics of this very internal narrative, and how did the process compare to your other novels: Hotel Tito or We Trade Our Night for Someone Else’s Day?
Ivana Bodrožić (IB): I certainly spent more time researching for this novel than I did for my other works of prose. I have no personal experience with physical paralysis; I haven’t felt the sort of bodily dissonance I describe in the novel, nor can I know what it is like to be a sixty-year-old woman who was abused as a child in ways that were, at the time, socially acceptable. In order to create my characters and give them the necessary credibility and life, I spent a great deal of time reading, talking, and researching about all these things which have not been part of my own experience. But more important than research is to write from who you are—to draw on your own feelings. Indeed, I have, often, in my own life, felt paralysed, powerless to move, though only at a metaphysical level. Similarly, when I was growing up, I felt bad, wrong and uncomfortable in my body, stricken with shame and guilt that also stem from the patriarchy. And finally, there were times when I felt—and still feel—as though my life were flying before my very eyes, as if everything has already happened, as if the scars from my trauma and pain cannot be erased and I am passing them on to my children. These are authentic experiences which are crucial to my ability to write fiction, as well as to my attempts to feel my way in, empathize with, and hold deep respect for the themes I’m writing about; they matter much more than my research of facts.
EEB: The novel closes with the following apology:
This novel was written as an apology to all those who are forced to live, invisible, in this society and this world, convinced since childhood that they do not deserve love, dignity, and, above all, freedom. This novel was written out of a desire for all of us to stop, while we still can, being hostages of our own kinds of locked-in syndrome. At the same time, this novel is the deepest possible apology to all those who were forced to live in Croatia during the adoption of the Istanbul Convention, and especially to those who have systematically suffered violence. This novel was written out of love.
Could you say something about the response to the Istanbul Convention in Croatia, and why you felt an apology was needed?
IB: The apology you mention at the end of the novel appears in the spot usually reserved for the author’s acknowledgments. In it, I am apologizing to those who have been persecuted by this society. From the position of the novel, this refers especially to groups which have been marginalized, rejected, or marked for destruction by the patriarchy and the system of conservative values: those who feel dissonance between the sex assigned to them at birth and who they are, the women—our mothers—who accomplished such incredible things over the last decades, and, ultimately, those men who don’t fit into the types imposed upon them by a violent, short-sighted society. There is a great deal of suffering in this novel, and I felt acknowledgments would have been out of place. Instead, I felt the need, from my position—first as a human being, then as a writer, and, finally, as someone who enjoys privilege—to apologize.
This novel came about as a response, among other things, to the dreadful atmosphere in our society in 2018 when the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, otherwise known as the Istanbul Convention, was undergoing discussion and adoption in Croatia. Certain groups, such as the civil initiative known as “Istina o Istanbulskoj” (The Truth about the Istanbul Convention), as well as politicians from the right-wing and conservative spectrum, with the support of the church, perpetrated acts of unheard-of violence, and without the benefit of knowledge, education, or compassion, they tormented a small, unprotected group of people. I was horrified by this, and it left me feeling powerless, struggling to understand where so much hatred had come from. This continues to spur me on.
EEB: Locked-in syndrome is a condition that makes communication extremely difficult. How were you able to learn about the experience of suffering from it?
IB: An article about a woman who had been diagnosed with locked-in syndrome after a stroke was what first made me think about this. The condition is similar to a coma—the difference being that while being completely aware, the sole manifestation of the individual’s volition is the ability to move their eyelids and pupils. I thought about how awful this condition must be, and that it must give the person suffering from it a remarkable perspective on human life and relationships. It also felt like a grim metaphor for the fact that all of us have, in part, inherited such a condition; we, who while able to move, are nevertheless locked inside ourselves—especially in relationships with those we’re closest to—and have been steered by family and society to live the roles expected of us instead of our authentic lives.
The protagonist of this novel, Lucija, tells her story from this point of view, recalling everything that happened and what led up to her condition. During my research, I contacted the woman I’d read about in the article, and found that she was able to recover to a degree and has written about her struggle. Her name is Ivančica, and she was an extraordinary inspiration for me as well as an invaluable collocutor. She was also my most exacting critic and was pleased, in the end, with the book.
EEB: How has the novel been received in Croatia and elsewhere in the region?
IB: I think of Sons, Daughters as being a little different, because its basic color is compassion. My goal in writing it was to spur readers to shift their perspectives toward empathy: a perspective otherwise limited only to their way of seeing the world, their own experiences, and learned reflexes. My goal was to describe, in simple terms, a series of events through the three perspectives, and to bring together these three characters—the young, paralysed woman; the young man trapped in a body he doesn’t feel to be his; and the mother, broken and deformed by her cruel patriarchal upbringing—to show how we are shaped through our lives by our upbringing, by various degrees of locking-in, and a reduction to roles. I link the three perspectives into a single story in hopes that when readers finish reading the novel, paths will open up for them to think through things, to try to understand all three—the mother and daughter and daughter’s partner. I resisted judgment, even toward those who base their identity on judging anyone who is different from them; injury may be the reason behind such hatred of others and any sense of being threatened—not always, but often.
The novel has been very warmly received among readers despite the topic, which may seem controversial at first glance.
EEB: How has Sons, Daughters been received in the Italian translation?
IB: I was thrilled by the Italian reception. The book launch in Mantua was a huge surprise. Several hundred readers came, and there were many glowing reviews. And furthermore, the novel was a finalist for the Premio Europeo Rapallo BPER Banca 2023, alongside women writers such as Annie Ernaux, Ameli Nothomb, Catherine Dunne, and others. Of course, this is thanks in large part to the remarkable translation by Estera Miočić, as well as the efforts of the Sellerio publishing house, staffed by exceptional people who read broadly and truly love books, and welcome their authors as if they’re members of the family. I can say that while in Italy, I actually began to feel like a writer.
Ivana Bodrožić was born in Vukovar in 1982 where she lived until the Yugoslav wars started in 1991. She then moved to Kumrovec where she stayed with her family at a hotel for displaced persons. In 2005, she published her first poetry collection, entitled Prvi korak u tamu (The First Step into Darkness). Her first novel Hotel Zagorje (Hotel Tito) was published in 2010, receiving high praise from both critics and audiences and becoming a Croatian bestseller. She has since published her second poetry collection Prijelaz za divlje životinje (A Crossing for Wild Animals) and a short story collection 100% pamuk (100% Cotton), which has also won a regional award. Her most recent novel, the political thriller We Trade Our Night For Someone Else’s Day, has sparked controversy and curiosity among Croatian readers.
Ellen Elias-Bursać has been translating novels, plays, and non-fiction by Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian writers since the 1980s, including writing by David Albahari, Ivana Bodrožić, Daša Drndić, Saša Ilić, Olja Knežević, Igor Štiks, Espi Tomičić, Dubravka Ugrešić, and Karim Zaimović. ALTA’s National Translation Award was given to her translation of Albahari’s novel Götz and Meyer (Gec i Majer; Harvill, 2004) in 2006. After several years of working at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, she wrote the book Translating Evidence and Interpreting Testimony at a War Crimes Tribunal: Working in a Tug of War (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). She was given the Mary Zirin Prize by the Association of Women in Slavic Studies in 2015 for her work as a scholar and translator. She is a past president of the American Literary Translators Association.
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