Drazan Gunjaca was born on 7th October 1958
in Sinj where he completed his elementary education. He attended
the Military Academy in Split and spent ten years wearing the
uniform of the Yugoslav Navy. In the meantime he graduated from
Law School in 
Rijeka and discharged
himself from the Navy. During the last ten years he has built
a successful legal practice in Pula.
He has been writing from childhood days. He wrote
numerous poems and the novel "Half-way to Heaven"
about twenty years ago. "Half-way to Heaven" is
basically the first part of the "Balcan Farewells".
He has never been interested in publishing anything until now,
when some personal reasons made him change his mind. "Balkan
Farewells" is therefore, among all his works, the first
to be published. Less than a year after it was 
first
published, the novel "Balkan Farewells" has
been translated in several languages and is being published this
year in Germany, Australia, USA, and other countries.The novel
has been awarded at the international literary festival "PREMIO
SATYAGRAHA 2002" (Riccione, Italy).
Soon to be published are also a collection of poems
as well as his third novel, the sequel to "Balcan Farewells",
which is due later this year under the title "Return to
peace". His first novel "Half-Way to Heaven",
remade and completed, will be published by the middle of next
year thus closing this auto-biographical cycle. Visit Drazan
Gunjaca online at http://www.balkanskirastanci.com/
*The publishers of BALKAN FAREWELLS are
MOONDANCE PUBLISHING www.moondancepublishing.com
& GSPP www.gspp.com.au
"Drazan Gunjaca's novel is a novel about
any of us. Everyone will recognize themselves or someone around
them in Gunjaca's heroes. That's why reading it, besides the
easy and flowing style and a lot of humor, hurts and leaves a
bitter taste in the mouth...The book is rich with dialogues,
often explicit, as they must be in the trenches and the back
lines. It adds to the dynamic and the novel is read in one breath,
from the front to the back cover..." Emilija Rogosic
Pageonelit.com: Where did you grow up and
was reading and writing
a part of your life? Who were your earliest influences and why?
Drazan Gunjaca: I was born and grew up in
the small but beautiful town of Sinj, to be more precise, in
a village near it, in Dalmatia, where I attended the elementary
school. Since my earliest school days I spent most of the time
in the school library. As I was an excellent student I had sort
of a special status, as it usually happens with good students.
I was very lucky to have had a wonderful literature professor
all through my elementary school. He was constantly encouraging
me to read and write so that at the age of fifteen I had already
read numerous famous writers starting from the Russian classics
(Sholokhov, Gogol and others) to Remarque, Victor Hugo, Traven,
Jack London, Hemingway. A lot of what I read so young I did not
understand too well so that I read it again some years later.
Influences? You see, I was born and grew up in the Balkans where
the myths and reality are often so intertwined that it is hard
to tell. You have to know that this is one of the rare areas on this planet where there
is no single generation in history that has not gone through
a war. And each one has its stories, its truths, its battles,
told from generation to generation by word of mouth or in writing.
Therefore it is natural in such an environment to develop a taste
for stories and writers who describe such human tragedies, from
Greek tragedians to Remarque's "Three fellow-soldiers".
Later my predilection for such writing remained. Still today
it is good and instructive to read Remarque, Leon Uris, Irwin
Shaw, Joseph Heller and others. Of course, I can enjoy reading
Hesse but anyway, I am somewhat more inclined towards the former
authors.
Pageonelit.com: Why did you write BALKAN
FAREWELLS? Tell us about this book --- Where did the story
come from? How long did it take to write?
Drazan Gunjaca: I have always wanted to
study literature but, as a rule, life and our wishes do not go
together. I was no exception to that rule. And so I ended up
in the naval school in Split where I spent my first youth years.
After that, after a few years spent in uniform, I wrote my first
novel "Half-way to heaven", an autobiographical
novel just to appease my wish for writing. Then life went another
way. I graduated from law school, became a lawyer and forgot
about writing. I would just read when I had time. And then there
came the war ad everything that goes with it. My life, as well
as the lives of many other people in these areas started to fall
apart. War is not fought only on the front line. Its devastating
effects often determine the lives of those in the rear. I am
still not sure to what extent have all of us who survived it
managed to put the pieces together. For five long years I'd been
trying to find a way to survive it and still remain a man, able
to look people in the eyes once it was all over. About a year
ago, in a strange moment in life, one of those moments that simply
come along, I felt the need to go on where I stopped with writing,
I sat down and wrote this novel in a little more than two months.
There are moments in life when you simply say what you have to
say to remain a man. You have to tell your truth in public, no
matter how painful it is or what consequences it will have on
you as a writer in the area in which you live. Balkan farewells
are my story, my life, my years… It is really a warm story
about people from the Balkans who lived there in that period.
It is the only novel which treats the last war in the Balkans
to be acceptable to all the nations living here. I have never
liked playing God and judging people for their actions, I just
wanted to tell a story common to all the ordinary people from
these regions and what the war did to them. For as much as this
novel is personal in its nature, it is also common to the majority
of people here.
Pageonelit.com: Where did the title BALKAN
FAREWELLS come from?
Drazan Gunjaca: It just came naturally.
It speaks about the Balkans, the people there and the numerous
farewells that happened to people in that period. I firmly believe
that I, and other people here in that period, have had to say
goodbye to more dear people than a dozen average persons in their
whole life, provided that they haven't experienced something
similar. Unfortunately, many of those farewells have been final.
To put it simply, the novel speaks about the Balkans and its
farewells in the war period from 1991 to 1994.
Pageonelit.com: What has been your feedback
from readers and book reviewers? What do they say to you about
their interpretations of BALKAN FAREWELLS? What do they
like about the book?
Drazan Gunjaca: I wrote this novel first
of all because of me and my soul. When I was writing it, I didn't
really think about its publication in my country, let alone worldwide.
A friend convinced me to publish it. I was shocked at the effect
it had all over the ex-Yugoslavia. Positively, of course. I have
received so many letters of support from people of all nations
of the ex-Yugoslavia that I could make another good book by simply
putting them together. It would speak about the frame of mind
of these people and their desperate desire to live again as everybody
else in the rest of the civilized world. There are, for example,
many young Croatians and Serbs who fled the country in the 90-ties
and went to the US where they still live today. They are constantly
asking when the novel will be published in your country so they
can show to their friends where and how they lived and, after
all, why they left the country they loved so much. They simply
accepted the novel as their story, their life, and as a wonderful
girl said, a Serbian refugee from
Croatia, now studying in the US, this novel is for her something
she can leave to her children for them to know when and how she
once lived. It was worth writing that novel only for her if it
really means that much to her. And there are numberless similar
cases. It is equally their novel as it is mine, and thank God
it is so.
Review? It is really a strange ambivalent relationship.
Those who accept the novel praise it to the skies (best illustrated
by the review in Belgrade's Rock Express, a Serbian magazine
for the young) while those who find it unacceptable for nationalistic
reasons are simply trying to ignore it. They apply the system
"I won't write about it therefore it does not exist".
Unlucky for them it does exist, and it is ever more present day
by day. The truth is bothering many people and it will not stop
bothering them in the future. It is personally an honor for me
to have told my truth in a decent manner, in my opinion, and
that it has been accepted by people all over the Balkans as their
truth too. A truth someone finally got the courage to tell. An
for all the rest… If I managed to survive the war I can
also…
Pageonelit.com: Tell me about your publishing
experience -- The good, the bad and the ugly ...
Drazan Gunjaca: All sorts. In my country
many people told me that the manuscript was good but too intriguing
so that they preferred to stay out of it. The right wing can
come to power tomorrow and then such a text… I live today
and I will tell what I feel today. And tomorrow? What kind of
a life is this if tomorrow I will not have the right to defend
my present opinion? And everything in life has its price, hasn't
it? And if I decide today to publish that novel, I will do it
this way or another. And that's what I did. Thank God for the
Internet. In the history of my people there were many truly great
poets. But as one of them said about a century ago, it is hardest
to be a great poet of a small nation. There, the globalization
and the information technology have their good sides. Every cloud
has a silver lining. Foreign publishers? I told you about the
Internet. There are always wonderful people who understand you
and your work and who support you as the directors of my publishers
have, Mr. Barry McKeown in the US, Mrs. Elizabeth Doran in Australia,
Mr. Herbert Utz in Germany… and there surely are similar
people in other countries.
Pageonelit.com:Are you working on a follow
up? Or something totally different?
Drazan Gunjaca: The follow up of this novel,
a new novel entitled "Return to Peace" is going to
be published in Croatia in autumn (right after the book fair
in Frankfurt and the presentation of Balkan Farewells
there). The remade first novel "Half-way to Heaven"
which will conclude the trilogy is due next spring. These are
really novels which describe the fates of people before, during
and after the war. I don't know what I'll do after that. I am
concurrently writing a novel together with a Serbian woman writer.
It should be something special but unfortunately, the day is
only 24 hours long so that I don't know when it will be finished.
Pageonelit.com: What was the last book you
read?
Drazan Gunjaca: "Ask the Dust"
by J. Fante and "The Devil's Part" by Denis
de Rougemont, which have finally been translated and published
in my country, too. I have quite a worthy home library, I collect
books and sincerely hope that one day I'll have enough time to
read them all. And hope dies last, doesn't it?
Pageonelit.com: Do you have any hobbies?
What are they? How do they enhance your writing.
Drazan Gunjaca: Unfortunately I don't have
time for any hobby. I love mountains and everything that is connected
to them (very strange for a person who was born on the coast
and who has always lived on the coast). To be honest, writing
is like a hobby to me since I am still a lawyer. But as the novel is getting published
in more and more countries my obligations connected to writing
are getting more numerous so that I will soon have to chose between
those two professions. I sincerely hope that it will be writing,
precisely, that I will be able to make a living with it and dedicate
the rest of my life to books. Writing and reading them. Both
is equally pleasant.
