Bedbugs

Holed up in her Zagreb apartment, reeling from the sudden death of her husband-whom she had married only days earlier-architect Gorana Hrabrov sets to writing a letter to her friend, uncovering the details of her life that have led her to penning this confession: from discovering bedbug bites on her hand to an ill-fated workplace romance and her estranged family on the Dalmatian coast. Not even her many professional successes have saved her from constantly feeling like a lonely outsider. Chased be her own demons, and possibly her landlord and the police, Gorana's attempt to find closure, and connection, by retracing her steps through Zagreb and back to her hometown is delivered in a delicately braided story that introduces English-language readers to Martina Vidaic's impressive insight into a psyche damaged not by the trauma of war, but by the intrinsic, and often isolating, difficulties of the human condition.