The Judgment of Richard Richter

In this gripping, war-torn epic novel, author Igor Štiks, a nominee for the IMPAC Dublin Award, tells the story of a celebrated writer who travels to Sarajevo to unearth devastating family secrets and the lies that have defined his life.

Author Richard Richter’s mother and father were always phantoms, both parents having died by the time he was four. His life, now at a crossroads, has been a jumble of invention, elusive memories, and handed-down stories. But when Richard finds his mother’s hidden notebook, written by her during World War II, he discovers a confession that was never meant to be read by anyone—least of all, her son.

Richard’s quest for the truth about his life leads him to an embattled Sarajevo. In the chaos of the besieged city, he discovers something more: a transformative romance and unexpected new friendships that will change the course of his search. But fate has been playing with all of them. And just as fate determines the lives of the characters in his novel, a betrayal reaching back half a century has yet to loosen its grip—on Richard, on everyone he has come to love, and on those he has no choice but to try to forgive.

Igor Štiks was born in Sarajevo in 1977 and has lived in Zagreb, Paris, Chicago, Edinburgh, and Belgrade. His first novel, A Castle in Romagna, won the Slavić prize for best first novel in Croatia and was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for 2006. Earning his PhD at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris and Northwestern University, Štiks later published a monograph, Nations and Citizens in Yugoslavia and the Post-Yugoslav States: One Hundred Years of Citizenship. His novel The Judgment of Richard Richter, originally published as Elijah’s Chair, won the Gjalski and Kiklop Awards for the best novel in Croatia and has been translated into fifteen languages. In addition to winning the Grand Prix of the 2011 Belgrade International Theatre Festival for his stage adaptation of Elijah’s Chair, Štiks was honored with the prestigious Chevalier des arts et des lettres for his literary and intellectual achievements.

Ellen Elias-Bursac has been translating novels and nonfiction by Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian writers for thirty years. She is the recipient of the 2006 ALTA National Translation Award, an American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages award, and the Mary Zirin Prize for her book Translating Evidence and Interpreting Testimony at a War Crimes Tribunal: Working in a Tug-of-War. A contributing editor to the online literary journal Asymptote, Elias-Bursac spent more than six years at the ex–Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague as a translator/reviser in the English Translation Unit. Her translation of Daša Drndić's novel Trieste was short-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2013.