At our May meeting, we will discuss Jurica Pavičić’s book “Red Water”. We will examine the fate of individuals caught up in the mechanisms of political and social change. We will explore how a family tragedy—especially one that remains unexplained, harboring many unanswered questions—affects the human psyche, and what significance the political transformation and the country’s turbulent history hold for the criminal plot. 

May 19, 2026, 18.00

The Central European Book Club meeting at the bookstore on the first floor of the Revens House will be led by Aleksandra Wojtaszek.

About the book:

“Red Water” begins like a classic crime novel: in September 1998, a seventeen-year-old girl disappears from a small town on the Croatian coast. As the investigation unfolds, new facts about her life come to light and hope emerges that the girl may still be alive—though the police close the case, her family refuses to give up.

It soon becomes clear, however, that the criminal plot is merely a starting point. Jurica Pavičić, a journalist and writer from Split, paints a broad picture of thirty years of Croatian history: from the fall of socialism, through war and political transformation, to the boom in tourism and unbridled capitalism. What matters most in his story, however, is how these changes affect individuals, families and local communities.

The meeting will be held in Polish.

Aleksandra Wojtaszek – Balkanist, literary scholar, translator and expert on Central European culture. Author of the book “Fjaka. Sezon na Chorwację”, scientific monograph ”Topographies of imaginary spaces. Serbian and Croatian speculative fiction” and texts in HERITO magazine and “Tygodnik Powszechny”.