Concrete Blues. A Montenegrin novel in English

LUZERN, Switzerland - Feb. 25, 2026 - PRLog -- Ballerini Book Press is delighted to announce the upcoming release of Concrete Blues by Slavica Perovic, translated by the award-winning translator Will Firth. Concrete Blues is the newest addition to the new translation imprint Rare Swan Emporium, launched in December 2025, dedicated to original language books in translation.

"Slavica Perovic's Concrete Blues is an impressive achievement. A skillful combination of contemporary and timeless, the novel juxtaposes the sins of modern construction industry in all its hubris and corruption, with the eternal myth of female sacrifice as preserved in the Balkan folklore. The result is a narrative that is rich in literary allusion and unafraid of social and environmentalist critique: a perfect introduction to present-day Montenegro and its literature."  - Vesna Goldsworthy,

THE AUTHORS:
Slavica Perovic

Professor Slavica Perovic was born in Kotor, Montenegro. A distinguished scholar in linguistics and English language studies, she has been closely associated with the University of Montenegro. As a Fulbright Scholar at UC Berkeley (2004–2005), she conducted research, and later was a visiting professor at the University of Bologna (2015). She is the author of several influential scholarly books, including Language in Action, Conceptual Metaphor of Culturally Related Phenomena, and Indirect Questions in Contrast. Her debut, Life Lift, was shortlisted for the prestigious Balkan NIN Award.

Will Firth

Will Firth is an award-winning Australian-German literary translator whose work focuses on contemporary Slavic writing; Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, Russian, and German. He is the recipient of the 2024 – English PEN Award for translating 'Anomaly' by Andrej Nikolaidis, the 2022 – English PEN Award for translating the Macedonian and BCMS texts in 'Take Six: Six Balkan Women Writers'. In 2016, he was Longlisted for the International DUBLIN Literary Award with Andrej Nikolaidis's 'Till Kingdom Come'. In 2015 – Shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize and longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award with Aleksandar Gatalica's 'The Great War'.

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