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After the War in Bosnia: Radmila's Life Under Handbrake
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 March 2019
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“Ljudski rod ne mrzi toliko one koji čine zlo, ni samo zlo, koliko onog ko imenuje zlo.”
Writer Radmila Karlaš lives and works in Banja Luka, the political and economic center of Bosnia and Herzegovina's (BiH) entity Republika Srpska (RS). Four years ago, Radmila left journalism because, in her own words, journalism had been “reduced to serve only the centers of power in BiH.” Since then she has published two novels, Four Leaf Clover and The Silence of Mestizos. Both works deal with the direct experience of war in BiH, with the phenomenon of evil in human nature, and attempt to demystify the process that has led her homeland into the situation in which it now finds itself. The novels also analyze the war crimes committed against the non-Serb population in Radmila's hometown, Banjaluka, and in Prijedor, a town in the northern-western part of BiH.
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References
1 “The human race does not hate him who do the harm, nor evil itself, but him who name the evil.” Giacomo Leopardi, quoted in Radmila Karlas, Četvorolisna djetelina [Four Leaf Clover] (2009) (author's translation).Google Scholar
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