Antonela Marušić

Following the publication of my third book – a short story collection entitled "On Love, Beatings and the Revolution" – I've been trying to find a place where I could work undisturbedly on a novel inspired by the childhood of a young girl from Dalmatia who is growing up in the cruel, patriarchal environment on one of the Croatian islands, and her relationship with her grandmother. The novel's narrator is reminiscing over her granny's stories from early childhood and youth, the historical circumstances of the disintegration of Austria-Hungary, and the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In this documentary-fictional novel I particularly want to accentuate the granny's participation in the refugee flight to the Egyptian camp El Shatt, in which thousands of refugees from the former Yugoslavia are staying in the midst of World War II, but also the post-war period of the 1950s and 1960s. Through stories and reminiscences she recounts to her granddaughter, the granny is trying to preserve the memory of the individual and collective history of the island where she spent nearly all her entire lifetime, struggling to survive in this impoverished and patriarchal community.
This novel in the making is simultaneously a story of the young girl's resistance and conflict with her abusive and authoritarian uncle who is trying to subject her to his rules and to his rigid value system.
The manuscript of the novel with the working title "Letu danci kao sanci" (eng. Days Fly like Dreams Gone By) is currently in the stage of the first draft, so the intricate work of fleshing out the narrative structure and language and style is still ahead of me.
As a writer from Central and Southeast Europe, but also a reader, I have a sense that in Croatian and Slavic literatures not nearly enough space has been devoted to the lives of women in the Mediterranean, particularly in insular family communities, told in their authentic voices.
Considering that through my editorial and journalistic work for the online magazine Vox Feminae I engage in activism and cultural analysis, for the duration of the residency I would also enjoy meeting representatives of local feminist and leftist organizations and grassroots groups in Vienna in order to exchange our knowledge and experience in the field of cultural activism and advocacy strategies.