Veselin Gatalo deserted several times during the war in Bosnia in the nineties. While hiding from mobilization, he gathered enough material for several books
Veselin Gatalo
Veselin Gatalo was born in 1967. He began writing when he was seven and reading a few days later . he earned his first money from writing back in the JNA (ex-Yugoslavian Army) when he wrote his parents to send him money.
He deserted several times during the war in the nineties. While hiding from mobilization, he gathered enough material for several books.
He was the informal editor of The Unasked magazine, and he has written for many electronic and print media.
He does not consider himself a Bosnian writer because he lives in Herzegowina. He is a citizen of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegowina. His parents are ethnic Serbs (as well as his grandparents and other ancestors), which raises serious suspicions that he might be one, too.
He has received numerous awards at literary competitions (ZORO 2003, winner of SF-festival Istrakon 2003, etc.), mainly anonymously, cunningly, under a pseudonym.
BOOKS
The Time of Brass Pearls (poetry), 1998
Rambo, the Highway Man and that Third Guy (short stories), 2003
Fiesta, Orgasmo, Riposo (2004)
I Am a Dog… and My Name Is Salvatore (2005)
Ghetto (2006)
About Ghetto//
The novel Ghetto is a post-apocalyptycal story from the future, which ends in the present, under arches of famous Hajrudin’s Bridge in Mostar, and in a way begins in the recent past. Veselin Gatalo, a writer from Mostar, has written a negative utopia and an adventure novel, as life in the ghetto still known as Bosnia-Herzegowina is a sentence to jail for life for the pathological types of strong muscles and weak nerves who earned it with their serial bloody crimes. It’s an ongoing battle in an open prison surrounded by the Wall.
The Ghetto is physically confined by the Wall, but its cultural and historic frame is that of Carpenter’s film New York 1997, Hermann’s comic Jeremiah, J.F. Cooper’s adventure novels and history of the South-Slavic peoples. With his indomitable imagination, the author merges these and many other influences into a Darwinist-futurist-naturalistic epic about a serial killer and a drug dealer, and yet a ‘good guy,’ a man-dog called Vuk and his dog friend Čika, a couple born to get by and survive on the skeletons of a civilization that has outlived all those local and global wars in the Ghetto.
One day, when the Journalist enters the Ghetto, with knowledge and secrets about crossing the Wall, the armies of the Ghetto – the Checkerboards, the Eagleheads and the Moonies – will do all in their power to get him. While the Journalist is only looking for a good story, the lone thieves, warriors and hunters, Vuk and Čika, find him. Soon there will be a war-ar-ar, and those who survive will – keep silent.