Balkan Trilogy – serie

Taking its departure from both the Nazi massacre at Kragujevac in former Yugoslavia in 1941, and a moment at the memorial museum in 1985, when a blue butterfly descended onto Berengarten's writing hand, this profound book crafts living poetry out of suffering and tragedy. Passionate and thoughtful, demanding and rewarding, this moral and joyous work is European in context but universal in scope and relevance.

Set in the crumbling ruins of Yugoslavia, In a Time of Drought explores the images and realities of war, destruction and dictatorship, and of fertility, nurture and peace. The key figure is the Balkan rain maiden. This gypsy or peasant girl takes on an ancient mythological authority and a wholly modern moral presence. In the wake of waste and war she is the incarnation of hope and renewal. In a Time of Drought has received the international Morava Charter Award. It forms the second part of Richard Berengarten's Balkan Trilogy and is published with the other two parts, The Blue Butterfly and Under Balkan Light. This edition is also the fourth volume of his Selected Writings.

Written during and after the disintegration of Yugoslavia, this book presents a complex vision of the Balkans that flinches from neither brutality nor beauty but honours dignity and courage. The book starts with a tour-de-force, the long poem 'Do vidjenje Danitse' ('Goodbye Balkan Belle'), and continues with a series of memorial tablets for victims of Jasenovac concentration camp. The book includes a sequence in memory of the Serbian, Yugoslav and Mediterranean poet, Ivan V. Lalic. Under Balkan Light forms the final part of Richard Berengarten's Balkan Trilogy and is published together with the first two parts, The Blue Butterfly and In a Time of Drought. It is also the fifth volume in the Salt series of his Selected Writings. Richard Berengarten used to be known as Richard Burns. With the publication of this book, he now repossesses the family name of his father, the cellist and saxophonist Alexander Berengarten.