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White Whale is delighted to host Asja Bakić this February to celebrate the release of her latest book translated to English, Sweetlust (translated by Jennifer Zoble). Many thanks to the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian studies; Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures; and the Yugoslav Nationality Room for their support.

About the book:

Eleven stories interweave feminist critique and science fiction into an irreverent portrait of our past, present, and future.

In a dystopian world with no men, women are “rehabilitated” at an erotic amusement park. Climate change has caused massive flooding and warming in the Balkans, where one programmer builds a time machine. And a devious reimagining of The Sorrows of Young Werther refocuses to center a sexually adventurous Charlotte.

Asja Bakić deploys the speculative and weird to playfully interrogate conversations around artificial intelligence, gender fluidity, and environmental degradation. Once again Bakić upends her characters’ convictions and identities—as she did in her acclaimed debut Mars—and infuses each disorienting universe with sly humor and off-kilter eroticism. Both visceral and otherworldly, Sweetlust takes apart human desire and fragility, repeatedly framing pleasure as both inviting and perilous.