Mina Hava [ Switzerland]
Mina Hava, born in 1998, studied Creative Writing at the German Literature Institute in Leipzig and Global History and Science Studies at the ETH in Zurich. There, she developed an interest in mining and nature conservation.
Seka is a twenty-two-year-old woman with Bosnian roots who lives in Switzerland. She is coming to terms with the national trauma of the war in Bosnia, as well as with a difficult family situation and her own experience of breast cancer. Seka’s father, a violent man who mistreated her and her mother, has left her an envelope containing photographs. These bring back memories Seka has repressed, which lead her back to her parents’ departure from Bosnia for Switzerland, and thence to the discovery of the concentration camp in Omerska, where Bosnian Serbs committed war crimes as recently as 1992.
Seka feels the repercussions of this terror in her family. At the same time, she witnesses the denial of recent history in the interests of capitalism: mining operations have started up again in places where mass murder was committed in 1992, and where its victims are buried. Seka feels her own history has been annihilated.
For Seka is written in the third person, mostly from Seka’s perspective, and has a fragmentary, experimental structure that reflects her disturbed state of mind. The book consists of Seka’s observations, memories, and thoughts about her life so far. Some of these fragments relate to Serbian atrocities, others talk about Seka’s relationship with her mother and her wider family, and some are highly theoretical. Seka and the author, Mina Hava, have much in common: both were born in 1998, have a Bosnian background and currently reside in Switzerland.
Mina Hava received the Alfred Döblin-Medaille in 2024 and the Literary award from the city of Zurich in 2023.