• Publisher: Beletrina
• 150 pages
• Author: Samira Kentrić
• Original title: Balkanalije

Balkanalia, Growing Up in Times of Transition is an autobiographical graph- ic novel. The author, an artist, is the daughter of a shepherd and a carpet weaver who traded their rural Bosnian, Muslim surroundings for an urban Slovenian, Catholic setting and became internal migrants in a country that celebrated the working class above all. Kentrić’s beautifully illustrated com- ing-of-age story follows the daughter of an immigrant working class family during the bloody break-up of socialist Yugoslavia. In this story, nothing is ordinary in an ordinary child’s life. The girl’s homeland falls apart, yet its remains are the only solid elements of a future worth striving for. The words of the immigrant child make it obvious that her sense of belonging is not tied to place. She belongs to people, ideas and ideals, so home can be anywhere… or nowhere.

About the author

Samira Kentrić

Samira Kentrić (1976) is a visual artist, illustrator and performer. She has illustrated several books of humanist thinkers and depicted news concern- ing international affairs, about the Middle East, the Obama phenomenon and the process of EU integration, as well as religious conflicts and social issues. Her work has been published in Slovenia, the Netherlands and in the USA, and she has performed and exhibited in various cities across Europe. Her speciality is editorial illustration – i.e. the visual rendering of political commentary – and she is known for fusing public, political dis- course with the intimate sphere of our everyday lives. In 2010, one such Kentrić work was included in the prestigious American Illustration Catalog, and she has since then published two acclaimed graphic novels: Balkanalia (Balkanalije, 2015) and Letter to Adna (Pismo Adni, 2016).