Every Time We Say Goodbye

"A very remarkable book. It has been a long time since I’ve wanted to proselytize about a new book as much as I do about Ivana Sajko’s Every Time We Say Goodbye . . . It’s formally and narratively thrilling, a very slim novel that conveys a whole pressurized life. The translation, by Mima Simić, is extraordinary."—Garth Greenwell, author of Small Rain

A soliloquy of self-examination, upheaval, loss, hope, disillusionment, ambition and failure—Ivana Sajko paints a portrait of an intellectual at a crossroads.

A man on a train, propelled from a small town on the south-eastern coast of Europe to Berlin. As the wheels turn, his mind feverishly clacks along, tracing his own past—and that of Europe—to a moment of violence he must flee, moving him further and farther away from the one person he loves.

Shipwrecks and border pushbacks; epidemics and industrial ruins; a family separated by economic necessity; a brother lost to crime; love and fear and memories of happier times in Berlin—yet through it all runs a silver thread of hope spun by a far-off friend. Every Time We Say Goodbye is an extended soliloquy of self-examination, upheaval, loss, hope, disillusionment, ambition, and failure, and is a profoundly stark and furious novel.

Ivana Sajko, born in Zagreb in 1975, is a writer, theatre director and performer, working in the overlapping fields of literature, performance art and music. She is an author of five highly-praised novels and dozens of political theatre pieces, among which Woman-bomb gained international success. Her many awards include the Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et Lettres and the HKW Internationaler Literaturpreis. She lives in Berlin.

Mima Simić is a Croatian writer, an award-winning film critic, translator and political activist. Her short stories have been included in numerous anthologies and have been adapted for radio, TV and animated film. Her translations include works of fiction, non-fiction, literary theory, screenplays and films. She lives and works in Berlin.