[7] Her Call me Esteban short stories collection received the “Edo Budisa” literary award of Istria region in 2016 and it was the Bosnian-Herzegovinian nominee for the European Union Prize for Literature in the same year.
Furthermore, as thematic text is related to mother-daughter relationship and I indeed feel like a daughter in literature (which does not imply that I deliver that role well automatically).
[4] Vladimir Arsenic describes the collection:[15] Eleven stories featured in the collection tell of destinies in mental hospital in Sarajevo, depicting with seismographic precision Bosnian post-war society with all its anomalies and deviations; portrayed through individual destinies of the sensitive and the unstable ones.
The book of Lejla Kalamujic voices the marginalized group of LGBT* persons, which is denied of its right to existence by the balkans society.
Free expression of sexual affiliation and love should be included, yet as Anatomy of a Smile tells, persons of different sexual orientation necessarily end in madhouses or outcast from the society.Call me Esteban is a short stories collection that won “Edo Budisa” literary award of Istria region – Regione Istriana in 2016[16][5] and it was Bosnian-Herzegovinian nominee for European Union Prize for Literature in 2016.
"[18] Sandorf publisher describes the book :[19] Nineteen stories featured in the collection depict the emotional journey of the heroine that includes her dazed memories of early deceased mother, her childhood with an alcoholic and absent father, witnessing her grandparents fading away and dying, the country that is falling apart, the world which is changing, all the way to the disclosure of her sexuality and sharing of her existential concerns.
The motif that runs through all of these is the motif of the mother, like omnipresent spiritus movens, and leads us unobtrusively through the emotional life of the heroine, sharing pre-war, war and post-war Sarajevo, “folk”, ethnically mixed marriages, Sid as a place of refugeehood, hospitalization in psychiatric hospital – with Eros and Tanatos.
The collection of Lejla Kalamujic is an authentic testimonial about the fate of a family, whose writing out is an act of courage and facing of the darkest and the hardest there is in a person.Short story Call me Esteban was translated into English language by Jennifer H. Zoble:[20] It was in the film All About My Mother.