The Balkan Air

Alexander starts his life in a pre-birth Heaven where souls wait to be assigned an identity and sent to Earth. As a lousy student, he struggles to follow the heavenly authorities' formal instructions. By a strange turn of luck, he is sent to a town in Bosnia and Herzegovina called Herontown (Capljina). He falls in love with the beauty of Herzegovina and meets Ronnie, who offers him a way to stay even though he is supposed to return to Heaven. Alexander is born to a Muslim family as Ahmet. And the adventure begins...

Aydin Kavara is a PhD chemist with a focus in biotechnology. He was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a part of Yugoslavia, and lived there until he was 13. During the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, he moved to Turkey, where he spent four years before moving to the United States. Issues of war, immigration, alienation, and identity have shaped Aydin's life. Having experienced the East, the West, and the in-between while growing up, he feels uniquely qualified to write on these topics. While he enjoys the world of chemistry and science, he believes objective scientific reality has limits. He chooses to write from a fantastical point of view as an act of exploration and discovery. Aydin is the author of numerous publications in chemistry. He studied British literature at Grand Valley State University and currently lives in New England.