When the Phone Rang by Iva Radivojević

"It happened in a place that exists, only in books, films and memories of those born before 1995.

When the phone rang it was 1992, 10:36am, a Tuesday, and in this moment the country of Y was still a country."

When the Phone Rang is the original short story on which Iva Radivojević's 2024 film of the same name is based. Set it early 1990s Yugoslavia, it follows 11-year-old Lana as she navigates her internal and external world amid a complicating and increasingly ominous backdrop, spending time with her friends, parents, sister, home; her everyday transformations prompted by 90s music, crushes, and interactions with her city’s changing infrastructure, and each repeated phonecall.

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Until now, red herring press has focused solely on publishing and distributing writing from the town of Great Yarmouth, on the easterly coast of England. This publication—Iva Radivojević’s When The Phone Rang, set in early 1990s Yugoslavia, and the original short story on which her recent film of the same name is based—marks the first of the press’s elsewhere series: writing from people and places considered elsewhere to here. The world may be more ‘connected’ than ever, but the more tethered the shards that we call nation states become—and the greater they seem to grow to resemble one another—the more we find ourselves often separated and ever-atomised. Yet it’s easy to fixate on elsewhere: to fetishise it, to project our own fantasies onto it, and to assimilate its specificities in service of liberalised ideas of ‘inclusion’. Foundational to real internationalism, to global solidarity, and to finding ways to speak between and among one another, requires the ability for us to dwell precisely in our specificities: of here, there, and each elsewhere.

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92 pages, A6 |
Cover & inner cover illustrations by Iva Radivojević; Inner illustrations by Sierra Pettengill
Foreword by Corina Copp |
Edited, typeset & published by red herring press | Great Yarmouth, June 2024

£10 including UK shipping |
£12 including shipping to rest of world |
£3.50 to Great Yarmouth residents: collect from red herring press, 135 King Street |
Free to red herring press members - see the website for details:
https://www.redherringpress.org/membership

As always, free to anyone who can't afford it. Get in touch: [email protected]