The Brass Age

'Like Olga Tokarczuk, najder has written a novel about a Europe that has lost its diversity and has been

destroyed by fascism, communism and, in recent times, nationalism ... a modern epic' Le Monde

'A masterpiece' La Repubblica

The very next day processions of young men, some still children, began to move around the little town of Nu tar, with drums providing a steady rhythm ... These young men came from German families, Germans living outside the Reich, Volksdeutsche. Some stayed in their houses, some were shut up in the storeroom by their mothers, but as time went on more and more of them followed the drumming ...

1769. A hungry year in Germany. Kempf the ancestor departs his homeland with his compatriots in search of a brighter future. Years pass and generations of Germans make Slavonia their home. But in 1940, when Europe is at war once more, this minority, the Volksdeutsch, are called to fight for the Reich, for a land now foreign to them.

Among their ranks is Georg Kempf, the narrator's father. Forcibly conscripted into the Waffen SS, he deserts, aware of the danger that this involves. At the end of the war, he falls in love with a committed partisan called Vera despite the unimaginable: if they had met earlier, each one would have had to kill the other.

The Brass Age, Slobodan najder's masterpiece, is both a family saga and a powerful historical novel about the destiny of those shackled by history, and the generations doomed to inherit the contradictory fates of their forebears. najder looks to his own biography to capture two hundred years of conflict and dividing ideology. In the process, he reconstructs a world that fell apart.

''This is, without doubt, the most important novel of Croatian literature in the last few years'' - Miljenko Jergovic, Jutarnji list

''The Brass Age is a novel that describes two centuries of European history; it is as frightening and as mysterious as the Danube. Brilliant!'' - Sebastien Lapaque, Le Figaro

Slobodan najder graduated with a Philosophy and English degree at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. He is a writer, publicist, playwright and has also worked as a columnist for several newspapers. najder published his first full-length novel Morendo in 2012 and The Brass Age has won numerous awards including the Me a Selimovic Award and the Mirko Kovae Award.

Celia Hawkesworth translates from the Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian. Among her translations are works by Dubravka Ugre ic and Nobel Prize Winner Ivo Andric. Her translation of Da a Drndic's Belladonna was a finalist for the inaugural E.B.R.D. Prize and her translation of E.E.G. by Drndic won the American Best Translation Award.

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