Translated into English by Jeffrey Zuckerman

Paul, a student who works as a night guard in a hotel to make ends meet, falls under the spell of Amelia, the young woman who rents room 313. Everything about her is a mystery: where she goes, what she does… rumours swirl all around her. Paula and Amelia enter into a love affair, but it is ill-fated, and one day Amelia suddenly disappears. Unbeknown to Paul, she has travelled to Sarajevo in search of her mother and to attempt to uncover the links that connect her personal history to the last civil war to have torn Europe apart. In this passionate, incandescent novel, Jakuta Alikavazovic evokes what has been lost and what can still be saved.

'This is brilliant writing with a lingering depth charge. It has beauty and contemporary resonance as it calmly, skillfully, spins light on collective and individual wounds - while never stripping its protagonists of their flaws or mystery.' -- Deborah Levy

'Jakuta Alikavazovic's sentences and charged silences bring individual and collective histories into unpredictable, illuminating relation. She writes with lyric precision while making the limits of language felt. We need all of her books in English.' -- Ben Lerner

'A dark, brooding jewel of a book, impressively and unashamedly intellectual and multilayered.' -- Catherine Taylor ― Irish Times

'A rare, powerful and solar talent.' ― Le Monde

'Impressive achievement.' ― Les Inrockuptibles