The Palisander Guitar follows the story of five women who are connected by a magical guitar made of palisander wood. The destiny of each woman is unravelled as we follow the guitar from the seed to tree, crafting of the guitar and finally playing it on the stage. Although these women are temporally and spatially remote from each other, their stories are intertwined. Asha belongs to a tribe of travellers that are expelled from the community, Ruza is a wife of a woodcutter who decides to enter the forbidden forest in order to save her family, Sirotica lives with a guitar builder who wants to use palisander guitar as a dowry to marry her, Gabrijela is a muse to artists in a passionate relationship with a composer, Petra is a famous guitar player who gets pregnant and has to decide whether to keep the baby or not. This is a story about motherhood, nature and birthing of an art piece.
Kristina Gavran writes short stories, novels, and theatre plays. Her play ‘Ready’ was awarded first prize Marin Drzic by Croatian Ministry of Culture and has premiered in z/k/m theatre in Zagreb. She also writes plays for children which have been awarded and produced in Croatian theatres and by Croatian National Radio.
Dipsut published Kristina’s first book in 2016; Rain in India, Summer in Berlin collects short stories around the theme of traveling and migration. The Palisander Guitar was her first novel, published in 2018; it was in the finals of the T-portal award and got the prestigious ‘Mirko Kovac’ award. The short story Signature won the first prize of the journal Večernji list. Kristina Gavran’s latest novel In Between (2022) was published in Disput and focuses on young people and migration. Her first play written in English was Pepper and Honey produced by Notnow Collective in 2019 and supported by Arts Council England. Kristina currently lives in Cheltenham, England, and works on the project “Birth Stories” about birth stories as part of the CIRCE European Fellowship program.
More selected prose and play translated into English read here: Relations
