‘When he created Earth and these lands upon it, when he divided people into believers and infidels, the crescent moon and the cross, the good Allah made us all different except for one thing. We die easily without seeking reasons; the reasons come on their own. And He sits on His celestial throne and is surprised by how little we cherish life while we have it, and how many tears we shed once it’s gone.’
Hiding in the woods, the narrator of Jergović’s eighth story ponders the push and pull of religion in Bosnia. His is one of the trickier voices in Inshallah, Madonna, Inshallah. Obsessed with the sins of a lightning-struck Hodža, the disappearance of a young refugee from the town’s memory, he resolves to be the saviour. He answers the call of God, who is “testing us just as an old grandfather tests his coffee with the tip of his tongue to see if it’s hot”. As he falls asleep in the cold, his mind is fragmented with fantasies of sin and punishment. The details of “the Charred Mosque minaret” slip away; he remembers that “the Hodža was bald and smooth-faced”, but he cannot remember why. When he sneaks back into the town, forgetting the stories he has told himself and the crimes he is supposedly avenging, our narrator commits a confused final act of violence. Jergović, through translators Ellen Elias-Bursać and Mirza Purić, delivers: “We both heard the same thing, and by that, on judgement day we will be judged as men – the woosh of the paddle like the woosh of the wind that brings the snow and the winter.”
Whilst the delusion of Alkatmer’s narrator is perhaps more complex than some other voices in this collection, the understatedness of his story and the winding, folkloric tone are definitive of Inshallah, Madonna, Inshallah. Every story is characterised by the universal intimacy of the voice of a stranger telling you strange tales around a fire. Sometimes there is magic explicitly at play, like the talking bird of ‘Zulum’. Sometimes, with the freedom of unreliable narrators and prophetic dreams, reality in Jergović’s stories bends only slightly; such is the case in “Tespih” and “Misir”.
As he describes it, Inshallah, Madonna, Inshallah is the author’s attempt to capture “the unusual documentary spirit of Bosnian and Dalmatian lyrical songs.” Every short story begins with a note describing the “lyrical song” (or songs) that inspired it, thus each is framed explicitly by the culture and history in which Jergović writes. The natural, and surely intended, product of this form is the sharp focus, every time, no matter the length or style of the story, on the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The book stands as a record of Jergović’s people, a collection of mythical voices that can speak to God, to Allah, to birds, and dead brothers.
The balance of folklore and monotheistic religion is a fine one, but Jergović seems well practised at spinning plates. One does not detract from the other: the presence of everyday myth lives alongside the honest faith of his characters. Nor does Jergović shy from the conflict between Christianity and Islam. The suffering of religious war is present, as are its justifications, its heroes and its victims. The form of a short story collection is, in this way, ideally suited for Jergović’s project, which does itself seem to extend a little beyond “lyrical songs”. Or rather, as I would believe myself, Jergović’s valuation of the music extends far beyond that first experience of hearing them. The crises of life, death, love, and faith are all within the bounds of “lyrical songs”,
It is fitting, then, that such a diverse chorus of voices is published in English by the independent publishing house Archipelago Books. Founded in 2003 by Jill Schoolman, the small team specialises in translated fiction “from the margins”. It publishes around 15 to 16 books a year, exclusively translations into English. In a 2018 interview for Publishers Weekly, the translator Bill Johnston describes working with Jill and her team. “It’s an unusual, collaborative dialogical approach,” he says, “and I find it very conducive to doing good work”. At the risk of understatement, it seems this same process has been successful for Elias-Bursać and Mirza Purić: Inshallah, Madonna, Inshallah is some pretty “good work”.
Unique writing can come from all kinds of directions, but I don’t think it is a coincidence that Jergović’s writing is coming into English through an independent publishing house, one known for its “dialogic collaborative approach,” the same one that has published his work in English three times before. You might say the same for Mathias Énard and Fitzcarraldo, or the 2026 International Booker winner Yáng Shuāng-zǐ and & Other Stories. Independent publishing houses are taking risks that larger organisations cannot, and as readers we stand to benefit enormously from this.
I’ll finish with this bit of advice. Contrary to popular belief, not everything goes in one ear and out the other. Some stuff gets kept, and it would be nice if it was interesting. It would be nice if it was the kind of voice you hadn’t heard before. So keep an ear out because Inshallah, Madonna, Inshallah is coming out on 13th October.
