Stef Harris was shortlisted for the NZ Booklovers Awards 2024 with his novel Double Jeopardy, and his latest work is another stand-out read, two novellas published together under the title The Girl from Sarajevo. These two novellas are expertly crafted and they both have strong women as the central characters.
In The Girl from Sarajevo, Katia is a beautiful and ambitious immigrant with one burning ambition – to be a successful novelist. What she lacks in talent she makes up for with her fierce determination. When she meets her neighbour, Dragan, an older man from her home country, he shows her the story he is writing, and she sees an opportunity. She offers to translate it, and they embark on an affair.
But things get complicated when, through a series of circumstances, she claims authorship of the book at the writing course she is on, and before she can backtrack on this spur-of-the-moment decision, things escalate, and a publisher wants to publish, something she hides from Dragan. But what Katia doesn’t realise is that Dragan has been keeping his own secrets, which will prove to be devasting.
In The Other Jasmine, a mail-order bride travels from China to marry a wealthy man working in IT. But when she arrives alone in a new country, her husband is not wealthy but living in his mother’s home, selling junk on Trademe, completely under his mother’s thumb. A prisoner of this situation, Jasmine is determined to find a way out of this awful predicament. But things escalate to yet another level when she discovers there was another Chinese wife, also renamed Jasmine, who has disappeared.
Both of these novellas are cinematic and feature strong women determined to make their way in the world. Katia uses her sexuality to devastating effect, while Jasmine uses hard work and planning to work towards her goals. The writing is exquisite, and the pacing is page-turning and compelling. A must-read!
Reviewer: Karen McMillan
Quentin Wilson Publishing