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—a journey having to do 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 Zagreb, Croatia. Increasingly desperate about the impending loss of her son in a custody battle, she flees with him and embarks on an irreversible journey. Throughout the day, she is haunted by her previous relationships with men and the dark forces that have aligned against 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 and emotional story explores how trauma is inherited and how its troubled memory lives on. 

About the Author

Tony Fabijančić is Professor of English at Grenfell Campus, Memorial University of Newfoundland. He is the author of four previous books, Croatia: Travels in Undiscovered Country, Bosnia: In the Footsteps of Gavrilo Princip, Drink in the Summer: A Memoir of Croatia, and Anamorphic Distortion in Literature, Visual Art and Film. He lives with his family in Corner Brook, Newfoundland.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). It may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that the original author is credited.