ABC Radio’s Nightlife Books That Made Me

I’m thrilled to share that I was on ABC Radio’s Nightlife — discussing the three books that inspired Time Kneels Between Mountains. 🎙️✍️

Books That Made Me — and Shaped Time Kneels Between Mountains

Every novel has its ancestors, and these three books carved the emotional backbone of Time Kneels Between Mountains.

📘 Surviving the Bosnian Genocide — Selma Leydesdorff
A tapestry of real women’s testimonies. Their strength, their grief, their fight for justice — it taught me how storytelling becomes resistance when systems fail. Their everyday survival shaped how I wrote Seka’s world.

📙 Postcards from the Grave — Emir Suljagić
A survivor writing from inside Srebrenica. His honesty about youth, rage, resilience, and moral responsibility grounded my work. He showed me how to balance fact, emotion, and witness — and how young people still found ways to live amid siege.

📕 My Brilliant Friend — Elena Ferrante
Female friendships, class tensions, and the small rituals that make a world feel real. Ferrante reminded me that intimate stories are history. She also inspired my character index and the detailed reconstruction of everyday life in Srebrenica.

All three books helped me build a story that honours memory, captures the resilience of youth, and restores moral order when the world falls apart.

Listen here: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/nightlife/the-writers-amra-pajalic/106080866

Or in my Linktree

If you’ve read any of these, I’d love to hear what they meant to you. 📚💛