In the cafe-bookstore "Bukva" in Skopje, on August 10, starting at 20 p.m., there will be a promotion of the novel "At Reach" by the Croatian author Ena Karatina Haller. The novel is published by "PNV Publications", and it was translated from Croatian by Sašo Ognenovski, who will also be the promoter of the book. The event will be moderated by Juliana Velichkovska.

The novel "At Reach" is the winner of the "Xaver Sandor Gyalski" and "Ivan Josip Kozarac" awards, and in 2020 was also in the final for the literary awards of "T-portal" and "Fran Galović". The Macedonian edition of the novel is supported by the Ministry of Culture and Media of R. Croatia.

Ena Katarina Haller (Osijek, 1996) is a Croatian writer and architect. She graduated from a natural and mathematical high school in her hometown, and is currently working on her graduation thesis at the Faculty of Architecture in Zagreb.

With her first book, the novel "At Reach", she immediately attracted the attention of literary critics. Haller also writes literary reviews, and in addition to writing and designing, he is also involved in photography, sewing and hiking.

A review for her novel was written by Zlatko Kramarić, a Croatian writer and literary critic, as well as a former ambassador of Croatia in Macedonia, among others.

- "At Reach" is the first contemporary literary text that tells a true story about the controversial events of recent Croatian history with a clear female voice and documentary-fictional prose. Realistically and with frequent lyrical moments, the novel convincingly depicts the rural life of Banovina, which the people of that region try to lead even in the deeply tragic circumstances of the Second World War. And then the shot from their closest neighborhood spreads to the whole place of Zrin, a toponym until then known only as the seat of the nobles Shubić Zrinski, while in episodes it revives the salon atmosphere of military Zagreb.

In her first novel, Ena Katarina Haller writes about the war trauma of several generations, confidently, without politicization, pathos and textual excess. Her spatially and temporally sprawling and, in its scope and subject matter, a major novel about war and the evil that variously enters our world is, at its heart, a very personal coming-of-age story of two generations of wise women.

"At Reach" is a touching, confessional text, merciful and healing, thought-provoking, opening wounds, but in turn offering comfort, even healing. The novel is an authentic document of rural life in the Bania area during the constant alternation of wars and the post-war period. Ena Katarina Haller, with her skilful literaryization, complicated it into a powerful anti-war novel.

It sounds incredible that such a young person, in his twenties, wrote such a wise novel, "without politicization, pathos and textual excess", as the reviewers of this novel have already noticed before me. Namely, I think that the author contrasted this big story about History/Politics to the small stories and incidents of individuals, to their life histories which are often hysteria, to their intimate desires, their ordinary, everyday, "small", but only theirs. , unique and unrepeatable lives.

In the novel "At Reach" those small, individual stories are put into relation against the big story of History/Politics. And precisely those small stories, sketches from everyday life deconstruct those big, historical stories in the best possible way - wrote Zlatko Kramarić.