Ivana Sajko: Everytime We Say Goodbye

14.10.2025 / 19:00 – 21:00
With Ivana Sajko

Book launch: ‘Everytime We Say Goodbye’ – Author Ivana Sajko in conversation with her translator Mima Simić and publisher Katy Derbyshire

Launching their English version of the novel „Every Time We Say Goodbye“, Sajko and Simić explore the violence Europe inflicts on outsiders and the harm Europeans inflict on each other. Can Berlin offer a refuge, as Sajko’s protagonist hopes?

Coversation and readings followed by a drinks reception, presented by V&Q Books.

A man on a train, propelled from a small town on the south-eastern coast of Europe to Berlin by a gesture of violence. As the wheels turn, his mind roams free in a feverish attempt to trace the genealogy of that violence in his own past and that of Europe as a whole. A man in search of a destination where he can be a stranger – but has that better place since ceased to exist?

Shipwrecks and border pushbacks; epidemics and industrial ruins; a family divided by economic necessity; a brother lost to crime; love and fear and memories of happier times in Berlin – yet through it all runs a silver thread of hope spun by a far-off friend.

A profound novel of contemporary Europe in the stark and furious voice of Dublin Prize-shortlisted Ivana Sajko, powerfully translated by Mima Simić.

Ivana Sajko, born in Zagreb in 1975, is a writer, theatre director and performer, working in the overlapping fields of literature, performance art and music. She is an author of four highly-praised novels and dozens of political theatre pieces, among which „Woman-bomb“ gained international success. Her many awards include the Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et Lettres and the HKW Internationaler Literaturpreis. A DAAD fellow in 2016, she now lives in Berlin.

Mima Simić is a Croatian writer, an award-winning film critic, translator, and political activist. Her short stories have been included in numerous anthologies, and have been adapted for radio, TV and animated film. Her translations include works of fiction, non-fiction, literary theory, screenplays, and films. She lives and works in Berlin.

In cooperation with V&Q Books

Free admission

daadgalerie
Oranienstraße 161
Berlin-Kreuzberg