Ivan Sršen

Ivan Sršen was born in 1979 in Zagreb, where he graduated in history and linguistics at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Studies. Since 2001 he has been working in publishing, and since 2004 he worked as an editor for several publishing companies. He edited numerous editions from the sphere of music, politics, economy and literature. In 2008 he co-founded Sandorf Publishing, which is today one of the strongest independent houses in the region, publishing literature from ex-Yugoslavia, as well as books from a wide range of humanities, including many translations. He published a novel Harmattan (published in Greek as Favlos kiklos) a book of short stories Fairy Tales from the Coffee Machine, an interview with the famous Italian comic book author Max Bunker Hello, Bing and co-authored a non-fiction book History of Zagreb Libraries. He edited a short story collection Zagreb Noir, published by Akashic Books in the USA and by Durieux in Croatia. In 2018, his short story Surprise was featured in the collection Balkan Noir published by the Greek publisher Kastaniotis. His translated works appeared in the renowned literary publications such as Lit Hub and New York Review of Books. He publishes newspaper articles, reports and short prose in magazines, along with translating literary titles from English. He lives and works in Zagreb.

Author's titles

Harmattan

Durieux, 2013, 176 pages
30-pages excerpt available in English

Translation rights sold: UK (Abibiman Publishing), Greece (Kastaniotis), Slovenia (Apokalipsa)

Harmattan is a novel about a young Nigerian emigrant Uhunoma who, after a couple of years spent strayed across the Old Continent in search of a better life, ends up in a German prison somewhere in Bavaria for not having valid documents required for staying in the territory of the EU. In prison, she meets women from around the world, each carrying their own burden of remorse, bitterness and frustration with being imprisoned.