Under Balkan Light

Synopsis

Written during and after the disintegration of Yugoslavia, this book presents a complex vision of the Balkans that flinches from neither brutality nor beauty but honours dignity and courage. The book starts with a tour-de-force, the long poem ‘Do vidjenje Danitsé’ (‘Goodbye Balkan Belle’), and continues with a series of memorial tablets for victims of Jasenovac concentration camp. The book includes a sequence in memory of the Serbian, Yugoslav and Mediterranean poet, Ivan V. Lalic.

Under Balkan Light forms the final part of Richard Berengarten’s Balkan Trilogy and is published together with the first two parts, The Blue Butterfly and In a Time of Drought. It is also the fifth volume in the Salt series of his Selected Writings.

Richard Berengarten used to be known as Richard Burns. With the publication of this book, he now repossesses the family name of his father, the cellist and saxophonist Alexander Berengarten.

Praise for this Book

‘These books not only confirm Berengarten’s reputation as a significant European writer but, in their handling of universal themes, herald his status as a great poet.’ —ALEKSANDER PETROV

‘Richard Berengarten’s Yugoslav trilogy is an important work in recent English poetry in that it explicitly places itself in the European poetic mainstream.’ —Francis Jones

‘Berengarten is one of the major poets writing in English in the early years of the new millennium. There is no other voice like his.’ —Anthony Rudolf

‘Berengarten is a poet who undertakes the underworld journey, and hears voices from Hades, as poets concerned with fundamental issues of love and death always have, and always will.’ —Jeremy Hooker

‘Even readers who are not inclined to seek “big themes” in literature are likely to respond to the beauty of complexity in Berengarten’s work, especially those familiar with the Balkans.’ —ANDRIJA MATIc