How can books help us understand the countries, cultures, and experiences that shape our school community?
Embedded Files
Explore stories from countries our school community has called home, and discover how reading can challenge our assumptions, deepen our understanding of others, and inspire us to build a more peaceful world.
Mrs. Ilvana CISIC
MYP/DP Leader of Learning for English
Before Serbia, I lived in:
Bosnia Herzegovina
Italy
Bosnia Herzegovina
How do you find a sense of belonging when war forces you to leave home?
Memoir / Nonfiction 15+
eBook
Bluebird: A Memoir (2009) by Vesna Marić recounts her departure from Bosnia at sixteen, when war forced her and her sister to leave for Britain on a refugee convoy. Arriving in the unfamiliar surroundings of northern England, she faces the challenges of a new language, cultural misunderstandings, and being labelled a refugee. With humour, honesty, and vivid observations, Marić describes friendships, first love, and the everyday experiences of rebuilding her life. Moving between memories of Bosnia and her life in Britain, the memoir explores displacement, identity, belonging, and the distance between how refugees are perceived and who they really are.
Vesna Marić is a Bosnian-born writer from Mostar. Born in 1976, she left Bosnia and Herzegovina at sixteen as part of a convoy of refugees travelling to Britain. Her memoir, Bluebird, draws on this experience and was longlisted for the 2010 Orwell Book Prize. Her first novel, The President Shop (2021), explores a family’s conflicting loyalties to an authoritarian leader. Across these works, Marić examines how political upheaval shapes personal lives, relationships, and the meaning of home.
Italy
How can a friendship inspire us—and shape the person we become?
Historical / Literary Fiction 16+
My Brilliant Friend (2012 English edition) by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein, follows Elena and Lila from childhood through adolescence in a working-class neighbourhood of 1950s Naples. Elena is diligent and eager to succeed at school; Lila is fiercely intelligent, rebellious, and unpredictable. Their friendship becomes a source of inspiration, jealousy, loyalty, and competition as education and family expectations begin to lead them towards different futures. Against a backdrop of poverty, neighbourhood violence, and restrictive gender roles, the novel explores who gets the opportunity to develop their talents—and what it costs to pursue a life beyond the world that shaped them. It is the first book in Ferrante’s acclaimed Neapolitan Quartet.
Elena Ferrante is an internationally acclaimed Italian novelist who writes under a pseudonym. Her Neapolitan Quartet traces the complex friendship of Elena and Lila against the changing social landscape of Italy. Her other novels include The Days of Abandonment, The Lost Daughter, and The Lying Life of Adults. Known for her intense portrayal of friendship, ambition, class, and women’s lives, Ferrante examines the tension between belonging to a community and seeking independence. Her work has reached readers worldwide through translation, and My Brilliant Friend was adapted into an HBO television series.
Serbia
What can one person’s account of captivity reveal about the human cost of war?
Memoir / History 15+
eBook
Notes of a Hostage (2023 English edition) by Svetozar Ćorović is a short autobiographical account of his detention by Austro-Hungarian authorities during the First World War. A Serbian writer from Mostar, Ćorović was taken hostage in 1914, with his life placed at risk to guarantee the security of infrastructure and the population’s obedience. His account records the harsh conditions of captivity and their devastating effect on his health. Originally published in 1919, this testimony offers readers a personal perspective on wartime repression and invites reflection on power, collective punishment, and the treatment of civilians during conflict.
Svetozar Ćorović (1875–1919) was a Serbian novelist, short-story writer, and playwright born in Mostar, in present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina. His fiction portrays the people and social life of Herzegovina, with a particular focus on his home city. His works include Stojan Mutikaša, Majčina sultanija, and Komšije. Elected to the Bosnian parliament in 1910, he was later imprisoned by Austro-Hungarian authorities during the First World War. He contracted tuberculosis during his captivity and died in Mostar in 1919. Notes of a Hostage preserves his firsthand account of that experien
DP English
What does it mean to take responsibility when power, privilege, and dignity are called into question?
Literary Fiction 17+
Hardcopy
Disgrace (1999) by J. M. Coetzee follows David Lurie, a university professor in post-apartheid South Africa whose sexual misconduct involving a student ends his academic career. He retreats to his daughter Lucy’s rural smallholding, where a violent attack unsettles their relationship and his assumptions about authority, protection, and belonging. Written in spare, controlled prose, the novel explores responsibility, race, gender, and the uneasy relationship between remorse and redemption. Winner of the 1999 Booker Prize, it offers DP English readers rich opportunities to examine narrative perspective, moral ambiguity, and how an author challenges readers’ sympathies. Contains sexual violence and other disturbing material.
J. M. Coetzee is a South African-born novelist, essayist, and literary critic who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003. Born in Cape Town in 1940, he studied at the University of Cape Town and earned a doctorate at the University of Texas at Austin. His novels include Waiting for the Barbarians, Life & Times of Michael K, and Disgrace. He won the Booker Prize twice, for Life & Times of Michael K in 1983 and Disgrace in 1999. Known for precise prose and searching ethical questions, Coetzee examines power, oppression, and the responsibilities people bear towards others. He moved to Australia in 2002.
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