The novel Banja, as reads the Serbian translation of the book, has recently been published by the Prometej publishing house in Novi Sad.

Sanitorium is the debut novel of Barbara Klicka, a poet critically acclaimed for her volumes same same and Nice. It tells the story of a young woman who is on a rehabilitation holiday in Ciechocinek, a well-known spa town. The sanatorium turns out to be a place full of traps, rituals, and secrets, and the heroine, despite many efforts, cannot understand the rules governing the spa world. Everything in this story takes place on the border between health and illness, as well as the everyday life of the hospital and its dark corners.

The author of the translation is the outstanding translator Milica Markić, born in Belgrade in 1966. Markić graduated from the University of Belgrade with a degree in Polish Philology in 1991. She worked in Nolit and Clio publishing houses, and, until 2009, in the library of the State Administration Office. She has been translating Polish literature since 1995.

In 2016, she was nominated for the prestigious Miloš Đurić Award in the field of literary translation for her translation of the selection of poems Kat bez maski (“Executioner Without a Mask”) by Andrzej Bursa. She was again nominated for the same award in 2018 for the translation of Olga Tokarczuk’s Księgi Jakubowe (“The Books of Jacob”), which was also supported by the Book Institute as part of the ©POLAND Translation Programme. She has been a member of the Association of Serbian Translators of Literature since 2004.

Last year, with the support of the ©POLAND Translation Programme, the translation of Sanitorium was published in Sweden (translated by Patricia Cukrowska, Prosak Förlag).