T he creation of a receptive space for marginalized literatures or languages can occur through a variety of means. Unfortunately in far too many instances, war and conflict become the primary means through which an unperturbed or disinterested audience connects to places far removed from the orbit of their ordinary aesthetics, formal, existential or political concerns.
Bosnian writing is certainly a case in point.
Prior to the war in former Yugoslavia, the few ex-Yugoslav writers known in the United States tended to be those either promoted or shunned by the Yugoslav state's centralized cultural apparatus. I n both cases, American readers barely caught a glimpse of the enormously complex relationships both of these writers had with conflicting versions of history, both past and to be written, as well as to intertwined linguistic, communal, national and regional allegiances.