Distributed for Athabasca University Press
Old Bridge, Black House
One woman’s story, told across two lives.
Maja Lončarić leaves her apartment one afternoon with a pistol in her coat pocket, setting out on a journey bound up with an ominous building known as the Black House. As Maja moves through the streets of Mostar, the present has begun to fracture, revealing visions of a woman in Bosnia’s deep past whose son was taken for future service in the Ottoman state.
In another timeline, Maja lives in a village outside of Zagreb, Croatia. Increasingly desperate about the impending loss of her son in a custody battle, she flees with him on an irreversible journey. Throughout the day, she is haunted by her past relationships and the dark forces that have shadowed her for most of her life.
Old Bridge, Black House is a formally daring diptych that weaves together history, the workings of the psyche, and the hard immediacy of lived experience. Shifting between past and present, this powerful story explores how trauma is inherited and how its troubled memory lives on.