Summary of Belladonna
A 65-year-old man retires to a small town on the Croatian coast. He has been diagnosed with cancer, and reflects on life, illness, and the dark episodes of 20th-century Croatian history, including Nazism, Communism, and the ethnic wars of the 1990s.
Reasons to read Belladonna
“Belladonna” is an intelligent novel about history, the frailty of memory, and the decline of human health. The English translation of “Belladonna” was awarded the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation in 2017. Daša Drndiç was a celebrated Croatian writer, whose books have been compared to those of W.G. Sebald. She won the Croatian Kiklop Award twice, first for her novel “Trieste” in 2007 and again for “Belladonna” in 2013. She was also honoured with the Croatian Fran Galović Award in 2007, for “Trieste”.
Setting: Croatia
Book set in Croatia: an unnamed town on the Croatian coast, likely based on Rijeka, where Drndić lived and worked for many years.
Original title: Belladonna
Year of publication: 2012
Nr of pages: 400
