Red Water
Croatia

Red Water

by Jurica Pavicic

Family & Heritage Thriller Mystery Fiction Drama Crime 2017

Summary

One summer evening in 1989, seventeen-year-old Silva Vela disappears from a small coastal village in Dalmatia. At first, the police suspect she has run away, but as Yugoslavia begins to unravel, her disappearance becomes a mystery that will haunt two families for decades. Silva’s brother, Mate, refuses to give up searching for her, while the investigation exposes buried secrets, fractured loyalties, and the quiet transformations of a society caught between socialism, war, and capitalism. Spanning thirty years, Red Water is more than a gripping crime novel: it is a portrait of a community slowly changing beyond recognition. Against the backdrop of Croatia’s turbulent recent history, Pavičić explores how a single disappearance can reshape lives, reveal uncomfortable truths, and leave a wound that never quite heals.

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Country
Croatia
Europe
About the author
Jurica Pavicic
Jurica Pavicic

Jurica Pavičić is a Croatian novelist, journalist, screenwriter, and film critic, born in Split in 1965, where he continues to live. He studied comparative literature and history at the University of Zagreb and began working as a literary and film critic in 1989. He is a longtime columnist for the Croatian newspaper Jutarnji list, where his writing examines Croatian politics, society, and cultural life. His fiction often combines crime and suspense with sharp social observation, exploring family tensions, moral ambiguity, and the transformations of the Dalmatian coast. His novels include Ovce od gipsa (1997), Žena s drugog kata (2015), and Red Water (2017). The latter received major Croatian literary awards and won several prestigious French crime-fiction prizes, including the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière for best foreign crime novel. Pavičić is recognised internationally for crime fiction that uses individual mysteries to illuminate broader historical and social change.

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Details
Published
2017
Author
Jurica Pavicic