Towards the end of Hotel Tito, a young protagonist listens to the song Like a Rolling Stone. Croatia’s war of independence is drawing to a close, and the girl, now in high school, stands far removed from the child who witnessed the first tragedies in 1991, when home meant nothing and a stable address was unknown. There was a time of aimless adolescence, a sense of wandering that never quite found its footing. Referencing Bob Dylan, Ivana Bodrožić narrows her focus to a novel that thrives on delicate gaps and blind corners, inviting readers who are willing to follow a girl’s gaze into a world shaped by that gaze’s oddities and pain. She endured heavy persecution as those days unfolded.
The Croatian writer demonstrates the skill to tell a life bent between genocide and oppression while letting brief moments of happiness, love, and progress pierce the relentless cloud of conflict. The narrative captures not only collective suffering but the way an individual can still move forward amid hostility. People are displaced, refugees proliferate, and the book repeatedly lands on Tito Hotel, a symbol that echoes from the postwar era to the late 20th century. From the end of World War II until his death in 1980, the focus belonged to Tito or Josip Broz, the leader of the Yugoslav state. The cultural memory of Marshal Tito persists in political discussions and in the recollections of residents, resurfacing in conversations and in daily life even today as a living memory.
Ivana Bodrožić’s novel, translated by Luisa Fernanda Garrido and Tihomir Pištelek, runs 208 pages and is published by Menoscuarto for a Spanish edition. This volume presents an autobiographical cadence, drawn from Bodrožić’s own experiences, and shows how personal discovery unfolds within a setting that feels both impossible and vividly honest. The reflections on memory become precise, but they also expose the messy, incomplete nature of recollection.
Memorable scenes unfold when the protagonist joins a municipal library, discovers the world of reading, and witnesses the parallel universes that books can open. The narrator reads three books a week and improvises reading sessions in the park, in the bathroom, on the balcony, and during recess. Time is spent in other families’ homes as well, connected to a sense of belonging that survives war. The hotel becomes a stage for different childhoods and unconventional friendships, revealing the author’s unique approach to the ordinary and the seemingly trivial events that take place amid war. The text presents Biljana and Ivan as the first friends, though Biljana’s family endures separation and her father remains on the beach while her mother protects them after surviving a prison camp. The character’s fragility is palpable, almost transparent, yet the network of friendships remains clear and important. The protagonist recalls these friendships with a mix of gratitude and fading memory, a feeling that lingers as 1991 ushers in new bureaucratic struggles and housing crises. Letters ask for housing assistance, and the weight of the past presses on the present: the sister begins secondary school, the protagonist studies in a dormitory, and the family mourns the loss of their father as the war escalates. These scenes illustrate both resilience and disappointment, as personal and familial challenges intersect with larger political conflicts. The narrative remains a study of survival, trust, love, and the enduring human capacity to find meaning in even the most difficult moments.
Bodrožić’s body of work includes the poetry collection First Step Into Darkness (2005) and the detective novel Rupa (2016), which earned the Balkan Noir Award. Her writing has received international recognition, including the Prix Ulysse for the Croatian best-selling book Hotel Tito. The sense of place and memory in her work might feel different today, perhaps even more resonant when encountered in her homeland of Zagreb, where like a Rolling Stone can echo through the streets in new ways and through new generations. This translation and edition provide a potent link between personal history and broader cultural memory, allowing readers to confront difficult truths through a voice that remains intimate and clear, even decades after the events described. Readers are invited to consider how individual lives are shaped by war, displacement, and the search for home, and how literature can preserve memory without surrendering nuance or humanity.