“We have a lot of good things planned for 2023” says Ivan Bevc, director of the publishing house Booka

January 12, 2023 | YU Biblioteka |

The Belgrade publishing house Booka has existed since 2010, when Ivan Bevc, together with his wife, recognized empty space on the Serbian publishing market. The main idea at the time was to publish new and exciting titles of domestic and regional contemporary literature.


 
 
The name Booka is actually a witty language game — Booka in Serbian sounds like a noun – buka (noise) in Serbian language. So the idea was to create a significant publishing house whose work echoes. In the last 12 years Booka managed to create an impressive catalog, and even to open three book stores – Bookastores – literary oasis in different corners of Belgrade city center.
Although small in scope, with 20 books per year, Booka is today among the most important publishing houses in Serbia. They have presented fascinating foreign authors (Uelbek and Ferrante, just to mention some of them), and many interesting authors from the Balkans region, with similar language but different poetics.
In December 2022, the annual  list of best-selling publications in Bookastore was published on their website, with a comment added: Apart from the undisputed Mira Furlan, whose autobiography was a complete phenomenon, there are two young and brilliant writers from this area at the very top. And the rest of the list shows the same – female authors dominate, the region dominates.
This year Booka began with the new title – the novel Ljeto sa Marijom (Summer with Maria) by Olja Savičević Ivančević, which was published at the beginning of January. This intimate novel takes place in Dalmatia (Croatia) and tells about the history of one family, and the female identity.
The director of Booka publishing house, Ivan Bevc, gave an exclusive interview for YU Biblioteka, at the beginning of January. In the interview he summarizes Booka’s literary year, talks about the most read, and the most noticeable titles from 2022, and reveals plans for 2023.  

Booka store

What marked the work of Booka publishing house in 2022?

  • A few things, at the beginning of the year, Mira Furlan’s book, which was one of the biggest bestsellers of 2022 in Serbia. We also had our first competition for an unpublished novel, which resulted in the publication of the great debut novel “Niko nije zaboravljen i ničega se ne sećamo” (“No one is forgotten, and we remember nothing”) by Mirjana Drljević, which is going very well … But, unfortunately, the impression of the year is the war in Ukraine, which resulted in inflation, a global paper crisis, a huge jump in the price of book production, and as a result of all this, the difficult survival of publishers.

Summarizing the past year, you recently stated that you published an equal number of books of translated prose and those of regional authors. On the list of the twenty most read books published in 2022, among the top ten are books by Milica Vučković, Lana Bastašić, Rumena Božirovska, Tanja Mravak, and Damir Karakaš. I would like to ask you – what distinguishes these books? 

  • Apart from the language, which is certainly common, so let everyone call it what they want, thematically those books are certainly closer to us than the translated ones, our sensibility is close, and it is not bad either that authors from the region often come and help promote their works.

I would also like to ask you about the phenomenon of Mira Furlan’s autobiography Voli me više od svega na svijetu (Love me more than anything in the world), which topped the list of the most read last year. Why was this book one of the most read books in Serbia last year? What did the readership discover, recognize, love…in this book?

  • I would say that this book resonated most strongly with the very audience that usually reads and buys books – among women over 40. They remember Mira, and they loved watching her roles. Now they can recognize themselves in her life story. Of course, the fact that the book is brilliantly written is not insignificant. 

In 2022, publishing house Booka, together with OTP Bank, announced an anonymous competition for an unpublished literary novel. How many manuscripts were submitted to the competition? Was it difficult to decide on the laureate?

  • Fortunately, it was not difficult. Making the short and narrowest selection was very hard, but when we got to the finals, one novel stood out from the other (very good) manuscripts by two spear lengths.
Mirjana Drljevic

 I saw that the winning novel of this contest, “Niko nije zaboravljen i ničega se ne sećamo” (“Nobody is Forgotten, and We Remember Nothing”) by Mirjana Drljević, was included in the wider selection for this year’s NIN award (the most prestigious annual literary award in Serbia) and that it is in eighth place on the list of the most read novels in 2022 by Booka publishing house. What distinguishes Mirjana Drljević’s prose? What kind of novel is it?

  • The novel is a genre novel only on the surface. It can be classified in the detective-crime genre, but it is only a wafer in which Mirjana masterfully packs an extraordinary story about three generations born in this area, the causes and consequences of the disintegration of the SFRJ, and how that affects us today.

Did any other authors and titles during the last year come as a surprise – both for you and for the readers?

  • We were very happy that the novel Tirza by the Dutch author Arnon Grunberg became a hit in December. It is a very difficult and sometimes painful reading experience, but at the same time a masterpiece that everyone who reads it remembers forever.

I would also like to ask you a question about the most read and most interesting titles of foreign prose that were published in 2022. Which titles stood out? Which ones would you recommend in particular?

  • Apart from the mentioned Tirza, I would also like to highlight the novel “My year of rest and relaxation” by Ottessa Moshfegh, an unusual and subversive work by one of the most talented American female writers.

Can you tell me what the readership is like today? Who are the people who read the most and follow literary trends? Did the two pandemic years affect the formation of new readers?

  • Women make up 80% of the readership, they follow trends, they know what they want, they are open to new things. The pandemic has had more of an impact on establishing online book sales as a significant channel.

 What kind of comments and suggestions does Booka get from its readers?

  • Mostly they tell us what they would like us to publish. Sometimes we regret that we can’t do all that, but we are a small publishing house with about 20 titles a year.

 What do you have planned for 2023?

  • Lots of good stuff. New novels by Michel Houellebecq, Karl Uwe Knausgaard, Frederic Begbede, Elizabeth Strout, plus a few new names, as befits.

Jelena Jovanović