Harun Šiljak from Zenica always loved reading. As he says, he loved reading more than writing, and thanks to an amazing professor of Bosnian language Esad Safić, he took no break in either reading or writing.
“I was born in Zenica, several days before the fan group Robijaši was founded. Upon completion of high school, I came to Sarajevo to study electrical engineering. I still live and work here. That is what all serious writers say – they live and work at a certain place. I can only add: I do what I love,” said Harun.
When he was 14, he discovered Jorge Luis Borges, author who still remains the central persona on his bookshelf.
Harun’s story of success serves to be written about. His collection of stories Murder on the Einstein Express and Other Stories was published in Springer.
“The collection got to the hands of the editor in Springer around this time last year. After reading the title story (Murder on the Einstein Express), the editor expressed a desire to read other stories I wrote and published in magazines, so I made this collection by adding three more stories. the editor liked my short SciFi cycle and the result of our cooperation recently saw the light of the day,” Šiljak said.
First story from the collection was written in 2008 and the last one in 2015. Some stories were written in English and some in Bosnian. The latter were translated for the collection.
“Since I was lucky to have Springer interested in publishing my collection, the international publishing house with almost two centuries of tradition, English was the first choice. Of course, I hope I will find a domestic publisher interested in publishing an edition in Bosnian. Stories in the collection were inspired by real people, real scientific facts and with two desires: to bring closer to the readers some very complex and often counter-intuitive concepts and offers some personal, imaginative visions of the future, perpetuated with artificial intelligence. It is difficult to say if I managed to achieve that,” said Harun.
You can see and order the book here.
