Mary Novakovich is a UK-based journalist and travel writer.

Her book, My Family and Other Enemies: Life and Travels in Croatia’s Hinterland (2022), won the 2023 British Guild of Travel Writers Adele Evans Award for best travel narrative book, and was also shortlisted for the 2023 Stanford Travel Book of the Year.

She has written, updated and edited several guidebooks, including Frommer’s Complete France and EasyGuide to France, Insight Guides Croatia and Dubrovnik, and Berlitz Pocket Guide to Croatia.

Mary has been a journalist for more than 35 years, writing on travel, music and television. Her articles have appeared in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, The Times, Financial Times, Evening Standard and other publications. She has also broadcast reports for the BBC’s From Our Own Correspondent.

Talking About Books interviewed Mary about writing her book and her connections with Lika.

TAB: You have been writing on travel for many years now, but My Family and Other Enemies is your first travelogue. Why did you choose to write this now?

MN: I started to write my book back in 2009 when I did a major road trip to Croatia with my mother. But, as the book illustrates, it didn’t quite pan out the way I wanted, so I shelved it for 10 years. In the meantime, though, I had done many more travels to the Lika region, and realized I had enough material for a book. Lockdown helped—as it helped many writers—as I had the time and head space to do the research and start to write it.

TAB: Your family are ethnic Serbs from Lika in Croatia, but you grew up in Canada. Your description of your first trip to Lika in 1976, when you were sent there as an 11-year-old, is vivid, despite the fact that it took place several decades ago. Would it be fair to say it was a formative trip for you? And if so, how?

MN: It was immensely formative, as it was my first experience of a completely different way of life—spending an extended period of time in a rustic mountain village in Croatia rather than a city in Ontario. Even though I was hugely homesick initially—and found the culture shock quite a lot to deal with—I ended up treasuring that summer. I grew up emotionally, improved my Serbian language and started my decades-long love affair with Lika.

TAB: A large section of this book is about your 2009 trip to Lika with your mother. You write about your difficult relationship with her, the constant bickering, and other symptoms you later realize must have been the beginnings of your mother’s dementia. Writing about this with such honesty must have been difficult. What made you do this?

MN: I had written nearly half of that section back in 2009 when everything was still vividly (and often painfully) fresh in my mind. So that honesty was very easy to come by. There was no way I could whitewash my experiences—and also my often shameful reactions—once my mother’s dementia became apparent. It was hard at times, but I also realized while I was writing it that my mother would never be able to read the book.

TAB: This is a very personal book. You weave the travelogue with the history of the country, often through the experience of your own family. Your trips to Lika were partly to unearth these stories and, in a sense, pay homage to them. Do you feel that what the people in this region went through—during the Second World War; the war that led to the break-up of Yugoslavia; and Operation Storm—are in danger of being forgotten?

MN: There’s a definite sense of the Serbian experience during the 1990s war being allowed to fade away, and their experiences during the Second World War at the hands of the Croatian fascist government are even less known. Unfortunately, there’s a certain amount of revisionism in Croatia—both among Serbs and Croats—and some aspects of their shared history really need to be better known.

TAB: The sense of identity of being a Ličanka is very strong, and you describe the closeness and warmth within the community. Where do you feel these strong bonds come from?

MN: I think it comes from many generations of people having to band together just to survive, as you’ll find in other rural communities. But so many hardships over the generations have made Ličani particularly strong-minded and determined: they’ve had many enemies to contend with over the centuries. But people all over the region—Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, etc.—have always been known for their warmth and hospitality to strangers.

TAB: How was writing this book different from your other kinds of writing, for example, the guidebooks?

MN: It’s been very liberating writing this book. Unlike guidebooks and my travel articles, I had no constraints over the format, no templates to write within, no word counts (within reason, of course). The structure was entirely up to me, and I absolutely loved it.

TAB: When did you start to write and what inspired you? 

MN: I did the usual childhood scribbling of seriously awful stories, so perhaps that inspired me to study journalism at college. I never really had that single epiphany as a youngster—I just loved words and reading and writing. I read obsessively as soon as I was old enough—my second home was my local library—so it was wonderful to discover I could actually make a living from writing.

TAB: I loved the vividness with which you wrote about Lika and your family. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Read my review of My Family and Other Enemies for Women on the Road.