Catch the Rabbit

DEBUT Bosnian native Sara, who enjoys her life in Dublin working as a translator and writer and living with her computer programmer boyfriend, hears from her childhood friend Lejla after 12 years of silence. She must come to Mostar and drive Lejla to Vienna to find Lejla’s exiled brother. As Sara travels through her native country, still scarred by war, she is startled to hear her first language spoken and realizes that she must grow a new skin. Much more than a female buddy narrative combined with a road trip, this debut novel deftly explores the relationship of language and self-identity, an issue heightened by Sara’s parents having changed her name so she can fit into her new community. As the narrative moves back and forth in time, Sara relives and reassesses her fraught and complex friendship with Lejla, descending into multiple rabbit holes of the past and discovering that important events are not always interpreted the same way.