The book “Mekka hier, Mekka da” by Bosnian journalist Melina Borcak was declared a “Spiegel Bestseller” last week. Namely, the German literary market is one of the most important in Europe and the world, because around 300 million books are sold every year, which is why this success is even greater.
Namely, only the twenty best-selling books are declared bestsellers, and “Mekka hier, Mekka da” took seventh place.
The book is about how language and media framing create and strengthen prejudice and hatred against Muslims.
An election poster, an attack, a mass grave – hatred towards Muslims has many faces.
Instead of fighting each one individually, we can go to the core of the problem and analyze: how do people talk, report, and think about Muslims? What mental images do certain phrases evoke? Which statements and contextualizations are lies, which are pure hatred, and which are both? And how can we avoid all this chaos?
The book was published by the German publishing house HanserBlau, which is part of the Hanser publishing group.
The chapter on genocide, which is the longest chapter in the book, attracted special attention from the public and the media. It explains how to speak and write about genocide, how to recognize and oppose the denial or downplaying of genocide, and what mistakes the media make when reporting.
As concrete examples, the author uses the genocides against the Uighurs, the Rohingya Muslims, but also the genocide against Bosniaks in 1992-1995. German media and critics also praise Melina Borcak’s approachable, relaxed writing style and distinctive humor.
The book is currently sold in bookstores in Germany, Egypt, Austria, and Switzerland, and the author will donate the money from the books purchased until the end of this week to the people of Gaza through Pomozi.ba and the German branch of the “Doctors Without Borders” organization.
The author presented the book to audiences in dozens of cities in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, mostly in sold-out halls, and every time she introduced hundreds of people to the facts about the latest genocide against Bosniaks.
Melina Borcak is a Bosnian journalist and author of documentary films, who has worked for CNN, Arte, Deutsche Welle, and many other international media houses, as well as for the German Parliament.
Currently, she works mostly for her followers directly, because she is followed by about 100,000 people on different platforms. After growing up and studying in Sarajevo, she went to Berlin and completed her master’s degree at Humboldt University Berlin. Now she lives half the year in Sarajevo and half in Berlin.
Her work in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is known above all for the ZDF satirical show about Christian Schmidt and for the reaction to the denial of genocide in the show of the German public service SWR, which is why the show was canceled forever, Radio Sarajevo writes.
