Books You’ll Want to Keep — and Share with Friends

You probably know the feeling: you’ve just finished a book and immediately thought of her. A woman close to you, someone going through a transition, a turning point—or simply someone who could use a few words of support. Giving a book to a friend is never a simple exchange. It’s a gesture of closeness. A quiet way of saying that we see her, that we notice her struggles, her doubts, her strength—that we’re saying: I’m here. I understand.

That’s why we selected books that aren’t meant to be read in one sitting and quickly forgotten. Books you return to, leave marks in, and reread as their meaning shifts along with your circumstances. They don’t offer ready-made answers, but they help you ask better questions.

Books You’ll Want to Give to Your Friends

Rumena Bužarovska – Toni, published by Booka

Through her short stories and her fearless public voice, Rumena Bužarovska has earned a status across the former Yugoslav region once reserved for rock stars. She is sharp, witty, and charismatic—compelling to watch and listen to even when she speaks about uncomfortable truths, such as the deeply patriarchal treatment of women in this part of the world.
She surprised readers with her first novel Toni, a precise and merciless dissection of one particular “Toni”—a figure we all recognize. Toni lives among us: an ex-boyfriend we barely managed to get rid of, our sister’s former husband who doesn’t pay child support, or, at best, a neighbor who flirts in the bread line at the local store, expecting the cashier to let him cut in line.
Reading Toni is uncomfortable because we know him so well. There’s even a trace of shame—for never having clearly told men like him what we really think. And yet the book pulls you in, its sharp humor pushing you to finish it in one breath.

Tanja Stupar Trifunović – A Bird Flies Along the Edge of a Sharp Knife, Laguna

Using a poetic language, Tanja Stupar Trifunović paints a childhood trapped by war and leads us into worlds that once existed—and could have continued to exist had there been no war. A world where growing up happens too soon, where everything is intensified: both brutality and tenderness.
A former life disappears, replaced by another that differs from the first like a bitter almond from a sweet one. Rather than presenting war as a historical event, Stupar Trifunović shows it as a traumatic process that leaves lifelong scars, especially on children.
A Bird Flies Along the Edge of a Sharp Knife was shortlisted for the NIN Award and the Belgrade Winner Award, and the author has received numerous literary prizes across the region for both poetry and prose.

Danijela Repman – A Chair Without a Backrest, Treći trg

A Chair Without a Backrest is an intimate, psychologically layered novel about growing up, memory, and the emotional wounds we carry from our families. At its center is the relationship between mother and daughter—the most important relationship we will ever have, both as daughters and as mothers. It is not always gentle or warm; often it is distant, restrained, and permanently shaped by unspoken words and unresolved pain.
Repman, primarily a poet, makes her debut as a novelist here. She has previously been awarded at regional competitions for poetry and short fiction.

Lana Bastašić – The Red Suitcase, Booka

The Red Suitcase is Lana Bastašić’s diary, though it goes far beyond the boundaries of a personal journal to become a record of the time we live in. The book was written during the author’s stay at a literary residency in Zurich in 2021, at a moment when the world was consumed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Auto-irony plays a key role in Bastašić’s deep introspection. She possesses such a broad and honest understanding of herself and reality that she allows herself to be ironic at her own expense—something increasingly rare in a world where we curate idealized versions of ourselves, Instagram-highlight by Instagram-highlight, keeping everything uncomfortable carefully out of frame.
The irony deepens when we remember that the award-winning Bastašić gained global recognition after Sarah Jessica Parker recommended her novel Catch the Rabbit on the Instagram page of And Just Like That, the continuation of the cult series Sex and the City. Readers who had followed Lana since her short story collection Permanent Pigments (SKC Kragujevac, 2010) collectively cheered: Yes, sister!

“One day, when I die and they burn my body, I’ll probably open my eyes and ask the technician at the crematorium if he’s hot.”

Radmila Petrović – I Didn’t Know What I Was Carrying Inside, Šmeker devojka

Though a poet at her core—at the beginning and at the end—Radmila Petrović is also an activist. She became especially widely read after her poetry collection My Mom Knows What’s Going On in the Cities, followed by her verse novel I Didn’t Know What I Was Carrying Inside, published as a samizdat. Together with her two sisters, Petrović founded her own publishing house.
After moving to Belgrade from a rural village, Petrović confronts within herself the clash between small-town experiences and the realities of a big city. She writes about discrimination and the position of women in society. Her poetry blends deeply personal confession with sharp social critique—perhaps why she has become the most widely read poet at a time when poetry seems absent from almost everything happening around us.

Author: Katarina Milićević
Photo: Cora Purslay / Pexels.com