Bosnian · b. 1982
Magdalena Blažević is a Bosnian writer born in 1982 in Žepče, in what was then the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Her debut novel, U kasno ljeto (In Late Summer, 2022), is narrated by the ghost of a fourteen-year-old girl killed alongside her family in a massacre during the Bosnian War, and draws on Blažević's own childhood memories of the conflict. The novel won the Tportal Award for Best Croatian Novel and established her as a distinctive new voice in post-Yugoslav literature, praised for rendering atrocity through a lyrical, almost fable-like child's perspective rather than documentary realism. Translated into English by Anđelka Raguž, In Late Summer was shortlisted for the 2026 Dublin Literary Award. Blažević continues to write in Croatian and lives in Bosnia and Herzegovina.