The Baffler published an extraordinary essay by Miljenko Jergović this week. First published on his blog, the essay revisits the first, uncertain days of the siege of Sarajevo, when the Bosnian Serb Army seized the heights and fired on the city for the first time. Simultaneously, Jergović was suffering from a painful toothache. “Toothache, Bleeding, Farewell,” translated from the Croatian by Mirza Purić, is a visceral, incisive reflection on the personal experience of war, thirty years later.

Jergović is the author of many books, including three published in translation by Archipelago: Sarajevo Marlboro (2004), translated by Stela Tomašević; Mama Leone (2012), translated by David Williams; Kin (2021), translated by Russell Scott Valentino; and Inshallah Madonna Inshallah (forthcoming), translated by Ellen Elias-Bursać and Mirza Purić.