Extra Fare to Mostar
All winter a conductor on the Neretva canyon line watches two commuters who fight every morning over one window seat and never over anything that matters.
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Editor's picks
Twenty-four stories we recommend for a first read: eight romances, eight stories of deception and eight scandals. Each is a complete plot, six to nine minutes long.
All winter a conductor on the Neretva canyon line watches two commuters who fight every morning over one window seat and never over anything that matters.
Why we picked it: Told by a conductor who sees everything and says nothing, it is the warmest story about the Neretva canyon in the collection.
An aging Mostar musician watches his young neighbor water her roses every evening and writes her a song, but she never takes out her earbuds.
Why we picked it: Sad and lovely at once, with one Mostar summer and an ending on the Old Bridge that stays with you.
For a married woman Asaf lost his restaurant and everything but his father's accordion. When she comes to lunch as a widow, he has nothing to serve her.
Why we picked it: A story of generosity without a single grand word, told by a café owner who only wanted to buy an accordion.
A widow and a widower tend neighboring graves at Bare every Thursday and never meet anywhere else, until she has to spend the whole winter in Hamburg.
Why we picked it: Two people who never hurry and one photo every Thursday: the gentlest story of a second love in the collection.
Kids in Livno taunt eight-year-old Roko for having no dad. A big panel beater finds him crying by the mills and walks him home to a mother who smiles at no one.
Why we picked it: Cheerful and warm, with Livno speech and a boy who knows exactly what he wants. A good one to read aloud.
A Sarajevo widower places a newspaper ad for the woman he danced with in the Olympic winter of 1984. He never made it to their date the next day.
Why we picked it: The Olympic winter of 1984, a small newspaper ad and forty-two years of patience. For anyone who remembers Sarajevo in those days.
Alem is twenty thousand marks short of a wedding. In his photographer friend's studio, he gives his last twenty to an old beggar who is posing.
Why we picked it: The most cheerful story in this selection, with a colonel you will come to like against your will.
Half a century later, Halida returns from Stuttgart to Sarajevo with her grandmother's copper jug, and one evening she goes down to Bembaša for water after all.
Why we picked it: A love that waited half a century by one fountain, told slowly, warmly and without hurry.
When the housekeeper says his wife and best friend have deceived him for years and his son may not be his, gentle Sadik from Tuzla loses it all in an afternoon.
Why we picked it: It starts as a story of deception and ends as one of the saddest in the collection. The last line stays with you.
In the attic of their house in Banja Luka, Iskra looks for New Year ornaments and finds a shoebox full of envelopes in her own handwriting. None was opened.
Why we picked it: Not a single quarrel or raised voice, and heavier than most stories of infidelity.
Hariz tells his wife he is going to Banja Luka for three days, then rents a room two streets above their flat. Every evening he watches her live without him.
Why we picked it: Told by a landlady who asks nothing, with a turn you do not see coming.
After every night shift Antea stops at a small bakery in Tuzla and becomes friends with the baker, to whom she talks about the married man in her life.
Why we picked it: Deception from the other woman's side, without judgment or easy answers, with the smell of a bakery at five in the morning.
In a Vienna restaurant a builder bets that his wife is faithful, and within two months his rival brings photos of their bedroom and her grandmother's bracelet.
Why we picked it: As tense as a crime story, and in the end the winner is a patient woman who never complained to anyone.
After twenty years of silence, her first love sends Sanida a message, and for the first time she starts lying to her husband about her evenings.
Why we picked it: The ending makes you read it again from the start, with different eyes.
Nevzad is sure of his wife, but that is not enough for him. So he gives his best man Vlatko the spare key to the apartment and asks him to try to win her.
Why we picked it: The darkest story in this selection: nobody dies, and everyone loses everything.
For her husband's fiftieth birthday in Trebinje, Radmila puts together a slideshow of fifty pictures. She made the last six just for him.
Why we picked it: The wittiest revenge in the collection, and nobody in the hall knows it is one.
On a rainy weekend at a villa above Sarajevo, an engineer from Tuzla announces that the new smart speaker has learned to talk. The guests laugh until it does.
Why we picked it: A satire you read in one go, with a smart speaker as the most honest guest at the table.
A widow near Ljubuški believes the traveler at her gate came from the other world and packs him a parcel for her late husband. Her son gives chase.
Why we picked it: A Herzegovina joke that stays with you, with a widow you cannot help loving.
The first lady of Bijeljina hosts a rich old man back from Chicago and decides to marry her daughter off to him. A rejected suitor has another plan.
Why we picked it: A comedy about a mother, a proposal and a very convenient dream, with Bijeljina as the perfect stage.
When a quiet clerk in Tuzla becomes a cantonal minister overnight, his wife starts handing out jobs, seats at lunch and new husbands for her daughter.
Why we picked it: A satire about a government that lasts three months and two days, told by a son-in-law with an accordion.
A jealous wife in Mostar calls the police to catch her husband with the bookkeeper's wife, and then the bookkeeper comes back and calmly proposes a solution.
Why we picked it: The sharpest story about reputation in the collection, with a laugh at the end you cannot quite read.
The day after the funeral, the relatives of wealthy Bajro Kajtaz move into his stone house in Mostar and start listing everything, from rugs to spoons.
Why we picked it: A family comedy about an inheritance, with the best last line in the collection.
To get her brother out of custody, Mersija agrees to four dinners on the same Friday with four powerful men, and orders a special wardrobe from a carpenter.
Why we picked it: Fast and funny, with a wardrobe the whole of Tuzla wanted to buy.
Every Saturday the mayor of Stolac buys flour he does not need, just to see the miller's wife. One rainy night he decides that flour is no longer enough.
Why we picked it: A merry story about one rainy night, one gray hat and a mayor who should have stayed at home.
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