From one of Bosnia€s most prominent poets and writers: spare and haunting stories and poems that were written under the horrific circumstances of the recent war in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Semezdin Mehmedinovic remained a citizen of Sarajevo throughout the Serbian nationalists€ siege and was active throughout the war in the city€s resistance movement, as one of the editor€s of the magazine Phantom of Liberty. Sarajevo Blues was originally published at the end of 1992 and was the first book in the Biblioteka €œegzil-abc€ series, published in Ljubljana, which provided a forum for Bosnian writers and translators under siege or living in exile. Semezdin Mehmedinovic says that €œwriting is, finally, quite a personal thing that doesn€t make much sense unless you are practicing for the last word.€ For those Bosnians emerging from the siege or still in exile, these €œlast words€ remain intimate possessions, one of the last bastions left against the commodification of tragedy.
