Diary from Sarajevo. War stories and life

It was presented last night, in the provincial seat of Acli of Cagliari, the book "diary from Sarajevo", written by Dubravka Ustalić and translated by Silvio Zai for Infinite Editions. It was his translator to tell the public the story that accompanied the drafting, the translation and publication of this book.

It is a story that is unbelievable, made of twists and coincidences, What brought the diary of Dubravka Ustalić from Zagreb, City in which the woman had taken refuge during the bombardments of Sarajevo, in Milan in the desk of Silvio Ziliotto, Serbian language translator, Bosnian and Croatian.

In 1994, After two years of bombings, in Sarajevo seems to have reached an armistice. It is at this time that Dubravka decides to leave Zagreb, where they had taken refuge some time before with son, and finally to return to his hometown. He always carries with him the diary written during the years of siege of Sarajevo, a diary that such detailed content of a war that had become an ethnic cleansing, He claimed the lives. The desire not to lose those historical memories, written for his son and for the children of the world pushes Dubravka to entrust the manuscript, hand-written in block letters and bound as old code, The Godfather of his son who lives in Northern Italy, asking the latter to disseminate the content. Received the manuscript, the man then tries a translator because the text is written in Bosnian.

In 2004 the diary is finally to Silvio Zai that only ten years after failing to find a Publisher that you publish. We are in the 2014 and Zai has to translate a text that tells the horrors but also the hopes and prayers of a woman, the mother of a small child, who lives the bombing of Sarajevo risking their lives every day, While her husband fights to the front. The text is written in a living language, the language of the everyday life of its author and, as explained by Zaidi, It was necessary to insert between pages a rich array of notes to explain to the reader the context of political and cultural events. As summarizes well his translator, indeed: «The diary of Dubravka is more than other Chronicles of our time: There is the love of a young mother and wife, the lucidity incredibly practice of an intelligent woman, the passion for the family and life, the desire to keep dreaming nevertheless and all, Finally, the ability to narrate, day after day, seizing the facts beyond appearance and even beyond the horror, without giving up the description of the tough daily life».

Zaidi is finishing the job and this is where her life is intertwined with that of the protagonist of events unexpectedly. Arrived at last pages, indeed, boy Italian law that speaks the language of Dubravka that she knows in the refugee camp in Slovenia where he has taken refuge with her son. That guy is he. Are the first years of the war (1992-1993) and Zai, twenty year old, volunteered from Milan to do animation in the fields. It is here that, among the many women and children, He also knows Dubravka. Author and translator will meet again in book published in 2014, After 21 years from their first meeting in that refugee camp. Dubravka now lives in Sarajevo, with her husband and son, After living for a while in Italy.

– Silvio Zai's translator, interpreter and teacher of Serbian language, Bosnian and Croatian. Consultant and author of pages of authors and profiles of Slovenian literature, Croatia, Serb, Bosnian, Montenegro, Macedonian and Albanian literature Garzantina (2007). Among the books translated likes to remember: the monograph Palmižana, The saga of Quintessence (2005), the collection of short stories eyes filled with Earth to Šimun Šito Ćorić (2011) and of course Sarajevo Diary by Dubravka Ustalić (2016). –