Black Butterflies: SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE 2023

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Zora is trapped in Sarajevo and she is forced to maneuver around the constant bombings, shellings, and violence happening in the city, together with her neighbors and friends, and she has to resort to art to keep herself sane. I also very thoroughly appreciated that this story helped to uplift the voices of a people seldom heard in mainstream media. The Bosnian war of 1992–1995 was something I knew little about, and this book helped me get some context. It was mentioned in the Author's Note that Black Butterflies is inspired by Priscilla Morris's great-uncle's story (where her great-uncle, an artist, was devastated and vowed not to paint after the destruction of the Vijećnica, the National Library of Bosnia) and the rescue of Priscilla Morris's maternal grandparents by her father from the Siege of Sarajevo.

I have a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and read Spanish, Italian and Social Anthropology at Cambridge University. There are many situations in the book that will show you a side of war you have hardly ever seen in fiction. Black Butterflies succeeds in showing how societies – and individual citizens – can indeed slide from safety to siege. Each night, nationalist gangs erect barricades, splitting the diverse city into ethnic enclaves; each morning, the weary residents – whether Bosniak, Croat or Serb – push the makeshift barriers aside.Predvidljiva je dosta: vrlo lako možeš da proceniš ko će preživeti a ko neće (mada me je ipak malo žacnulo kad sam došla do pogibije) i kraj je zbrzan, cap, cap, cap, tako da ostajemo bez razrešenja za sve ostale ljude iz zgrade (koja, naravno, funkcioniše kao mala Jugoslavija, samo svi ostaju složni do kraja romana), što je bzvz jer se poprilično potrudila da izgradi sve junake i junakinje. I went to Bosnia, Croatia and Montenegro on holidays in May 2006, accidentally stumbling on an independence referendum in the latter, when it seceded from Serbia. The author’s note clarifies which two persons' experiences she combined and adapted into this story. The image that was the catalyst for the writing of the novel was that of flames billowing through the windows of the Bosnian National Library, where my great-uncle had his studio. It’s an informative novel allowing readers to develop compassion for refugees and those who seek asylum today.

The sky is cerulean blue until it dims to black, with the shelling and devastation of innocent lives lost, historic buildings demolished, books and papers blown by the wind. It is hard to believe that this is the author’s debut novel and I look forward to reading more from this author in the future. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. The devastation of the war - the death, the hunger, the destruction of the city, the freezing cold of winter with no heat, and more - plays out on these pages. Published in May 2022 to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the start of the almost-four-year assault, this is Priscilla’s debut novel.The countryside was still littered with landmines, dotted with unoccupied houses and pockmarked with graves marked with simple white crosses here and there. Black Butterflies vividly details the costs of war, the extent of destruction, and survival strategies for people who are caught in it. All the residents of Zora’s apartment building come together, helping each other cope with a situation most of them find hard to understand.

That lends a lot of validity to what would otherwise have seemed as fictional events improbable in real life. Black Butterflies, her debut novel, was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2023, the RSL Ondaatje Prize, the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award, the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize and the Nota Bene Prize. Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's pageview limit. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.When violence finally spills over, Zora, an artist and teacher, sends her husband and elderly mother to safety with her daughter in England. In the darkness of the war people beseiged in Sarajevo still try to lead their lives sharing what little they have holding onto friendship, love, and of course art! Zora’s pain and despair are palpable as she tries to contact her family and find a way to leave when her living conditions become unbearable. As the assault deepens and everything they love is laid to waste, black ashes floating over the rooftops, Zora and her friends are forced to rebuild themselves, over and over. The title has a special significance in the story, and this gets revealed only about the midway mark in a distressing event.

This book also includes one of my least favorite tropes (an affair), and the fallout of that was never examined in any real depth. The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network. The human interest element revolves around a talented painter, and her fascination with the bridges of Sarajevo (Goats bridge in particular) is well described.Payments made using National Book Tokens are processed by National Book Tokens Ltd, and you can read their Terms and Conditions here. While things are difficult and there are small obstacles she must face, Zora begins to enjoy the solitude and the chance it gives her to engage in her painting. Drawing on her own family history, Morris has crafted an absorbing story set in Sarajevo in 1992, the first year of the Bosnian War. But when violence finally spills over, she sees that she must send her husband and elderly mother to safety with her daughter in England.