Author Talk: Edita Mujkic in Conversation at Hobart Library

Edita Mujkic is an award-winning author and a National Ambassador for the Refugee Council of Australia.

In May 1992, Edita fled her war-torn hometown of Sarajevo with two young children, in a borrowed car, with two bags and fifty American dollars in her pocket. Her husband, Goran, stayed behind trapped in the impenetrable siege.

Edita’s memoir, Between Before and After, a true story about escape from besieged Sarajevo, tracks their six hundred days of involuntary separation—Edita’s attempts to extricate her husband from the besieged city and Goran’s struggles to survive.

A deeply human story about conflict and displacement, the power of courage and love, and the profound difference that a simple act of kindness can make.

About the book:

The memoir, more relevant than ever as the Israel-Palestine conflict rages, and thousands of Ukrainian mothers and children are exiled, details my fight for my children and survival as a refugee during 600 days of separation from my husband, who stayed behind in Sarajevo in the longest siege in modern history.

From being held hostage when fleeing Bosnia, to raising my two children alone while fearing for my husband’s life after his numerous attempts to leave the siege failed, it also tells the story of British strangers becoming friends and helping reunite our family before we migrated to Australia and settled in Melbourne.

Between Before and After, published by Hawkeye Books in Australia, was recently shortlisted for 2024 Memoir Prize from Memoir Magazine, and it was runner-up in United Kingdom’s Hunter Davies Lakeland Book of the Year 2023 where it was also awarded the Bookends Prize for People & Business. In Australia, while writing the memoir, I won and was shortlisted for several literary prizes.

Award-winning Australian author, Alice Pung OAM, has said that Between Before and After is “the story of one woman’s patience, resilience and finding joy amidst the suffering of war – a transcendental and wise book about exile and the power of enduring love”.

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