In Late Summer is a novel by Magdalena Blažević written from the perspective of a 14-year-old girl killed in the August 1993 massacre in Bosnia. It describes events when a picturesque village is caught in the turmoil of war where the entire worlds of the protagonists Ivana and Dunja and their families are blown up and swept away.
Blažević’s poetic novel is based on personal experience, full of images of ordinary country life as well as the brutality of war. This is a haunting portrait of a family and a village, each affected differently by the daily realities of civil war. Often compared to the Nobel Prize-nominated Austrian poet and author Ingeborg Bachmann, Blažević weaves emotion under the surface of her precise and lyrical prose.
Translated by Anđelka Raguž.
Linden Editions, 172pp, 13cm x 20cm, paperback, 2022, translated 2025