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After 13 years of work and almost 300 published titles, Croatian publisher Sandorf launched its American branch, Sandorf Passage, an independent nonprofit publishing house. In charge of the American branch will be Buzz Polle, editor, while Ivan Sršen, Sandorf’s co-founder, coordinates the printing, largely done in Croatia.

Sandorf Passage will start with the Balkan authors whose books were printed in Croatia upon translation and then shipped on a two-month trip to the USA. Independent Publishers Group is currently distributing them to bookstores. “Books have been traveling to States by ship for at least two months. Not your everyday journey” – shared Ivan Sršen from Sandorf.

Sandorf’s American branch will focus on authors and works inspired by the conflict zones, among which are mostly those from Croatia and ex-Yugoslavia, with four titles already in distribution in the States.

Among works that will launch Sandorf Passage into the literary world is Bekim Sejranović’ From Nowhere to Nowhere (Nigdje, niotkuda, translated by Will Firth), a novel using nomadic aesthetics to portray what it means to live a life from which you've always been distant. The novel The President Shop by Vesna Marić, a British author born in Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina), mixes political allegory and fantasy in a family saga about conflicting attitudes towards an authoritarian ruler of an unnamed Balkan country. Ivana Bodrožić' poetry collection In a Sentimental Mood (translated by Ellen Elias-Bursać and Damir Šodan) opposes the idea that being alone is the worst thing that can happen, suggesting it’s worse to lose one’s dignity and the dignity of one’s words. Last but not least, the 1926 classic and modernist travelogue, Journey to Russia (Izlet u Rusiju, translated by Will Firth) by Miroslav Krleža, one of the greatest Croatian authors who we rarely see in translation.