#RivetingReviews: Morelle Smith reviews SARAJEVO SAGA by Stefan Çapaliku, translated by Vlora Konushevci
Lekë Cukali, the narrator of Sarajevo Saga,is an author who arrives in the eponymous city to spend a month there as a writer in residence. We learn later that he has had several residencies in the past, so this is not unusual for him, to spend a month in a foreign country in order to concentrate on his writing. But almost immediately, this one feels different. One reason is that he is carrying memories, drawn from a book of old photographs that his father used to pull out and show him from time to time. One branch of his father’s family left Shkodër in Albania at the end of World War One. It was believed they went to Bosnia, but since the communists came to power in Albania after World War Two, the country was virtually sealed off from the rest of the world and there had been no more contact.
Memories of the photographs and of his father’s stories come back to Lekë as he tries to settle into his new surroundings. But right from the start, there are things about his new home that irritate: the heating does not work, there is no hot water, it is unseasonably cold, there is no proper desk for him to work at and there is no wifi, so he cannot contact Esma, whose job it is to deal with any problems that might arise. When he does finally make contact with her, by going to a cafe and using their wifi, she tries to deal with his several complaints but gives the impression that he is being impatient and demanding even while she is doing her best.
As well as having to take time to deal with the practical issues, Lekë also finds it difficult to stick to his planned writing proposal and feels strangely bereft of ideas. He starts to feel haunted by his father’s desire to find the descendants of the family members who moved here and by the photographs of these people. The story of their journey from Shkodër to Sarajevo starts to fill Lekë’s thoughts more and more, as if it is his task to uncover what happened to them.
The novel then divides into two parts: the past, at the end of World War I, with the story of the family’s journey from Albania to Bosnia and their life there, and the present day, with Lekë becoming more and more interested in finding out about these vanished family members. At the same time he has to deal with the practical difficulties of his apartment, the people in the organisation who are supposed to help him, and people he meets in local cafés, who have not heard of his family and do not seem particularly interested in helping him. Initially, there is an edge to his enquiries and his relationships with others: he does not seem to be able to make connections with either the people or the place; he feels apart, as if kept at a distance.
In the novel’s other timeframe, Lekë’s relatives escape from the chaos and danger in Shkodër as the Austrian army retreats at the end of WW1. The family consists of the mother and four children, their father having been killed in the war. It is also written in the first person, from the point of view of the younger boy, Mikel, who was about ten years old when they left Albania. After privations and dangers, they are taken in by a kind Jewish family in Sarajevo, where the mother becomes cook and housekeeper, and the children are brought up in relative comfort and safety – until the troubles of the 1930s, when another war reaches the Balkans.
The two stories and timeframes twist together. In the present day, Lekë comes to feel that he brushes shoulders with the past, in the cafés, in his neighbours’ attitudes, and even in his own apartment. He has some success in tracing his relatives but there are still tangles he cannot unravel. At the heart of the mystery he is confronted with identity, what it is and what it means, how much it has to do with geography and place, how much with time, and how much can be gained by uncovering the secrets of the past.
There are lovely touches where Lekë’s sense of alienation is palpable. He feels mounting frustration at Esma’s lack of interest in his problems. He keeps losing his way in the labyrinth of the city centre’s narrow streets. ‘Ordinary’ characters turn out to have a significance he feels but cannot quite grasp: the owner of a café acts in a suspicious, almost hostile way; his neighbour, who first acts in a friendly, even admiring manner, later leaves unsettling, coded notes. Lekë is not sure who, if anyone, to trust.
This is a truly thrilling and exciting story. Stefan Çapaliku is a master at setting the scene, dropping small details, inserting doubts like a stone in your shoe, something that causes initial discomfort but then grows in the narrator’s mind, until you are not sure if his fears and paranoia are overblown or entirely justified. And after leading you through the labyrinth of the city and its characters, both dead and alive, Stefan Çapaliku skilfully brings you to a surprising and unexpected dénouement.
Reviewed by Morelle Smith
SARAJEVO SAGA
Written by Stefan Çapaliku
Translated from the Albanian by Vlora Konushevci
Published by Istros Books (2026)
September 2026 #RivetingReviews titles are available to buy from bookshop.org.
Morelle Smith writes poetry, fiction, essays and travel articles. She is particularly interested in European literature and wrote the first book in English about the writer and traveller Annemarie Schwarzenbach (The Buoyancy of the Craft, diehard, 2021). Her work has been translated into several languages including Albanian, Romanian, German, French.
Read Morelle Smith’s #RivetingReview of SLOVENIAN POETRY TODAY edited by Herbert Kuhner & Peter Kersche
Read Morelle Smith’s #RivetingReview of ERASED by Miha Mazzini, translated by Gregor Timothy Čeh
Read Morelle Smith’s #RivetingReview of GRIMM’S FAIRY TALES DECODED by Marko Pogačnik
Read Morelle Smith’s #RivetingReview of A SWARM OF DUST by Evald Flisar
Leave a Reply