Red Water

1989 The Dalmatian Coast.

The investigation into a young woman's disappearance falters as Yugoslavia plunges into civil war. Another three decades will pass before the truth is revealed. In a fishing village on the coast of Croatia, Silva, a 17-year-old girl, disappears one night. She is beautiful and cheeky, admired by many; but the police investigation led by Inspector Gorki Sain reveals a more complex portrait of Silva than her family believed. She dabbled in drugs and resold heroin. The police investigation is brought to a halt as Tito's Yugoslavia descends into civil war. Only the family of the young woman stubbornly continues the search, amid the upheavals of Croatian society, from the fall of communism, through the 1991-1995 civil war, to the explosion of tourism with its toxic land speculation and corruption. Much happens as if we were witnessing vengeful providence at work in an ancient tragedy, in this case, set off by a sordid crime.

Jurica Pavicic (born 1965) is a Croatian writer, scriptwriter, and journalist, living in Split. He has written seven novels, two collections of short stories and essays. His work has been translated into five languages, but Red Water is his first novel to be translated into English.

Matt Robinson, born in the UK in 1978, lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Formerly a foreign correspondent with Reuters, he now works as a freelance editor and literary translator. Red Water is the second novel he has translated.