The Mosaic of the Broken Soul

Branka Cubrilo was born in 1961 in Croatia. At the age of eighteen she wrote her first novel, I Knew Jane Eyre, and in 1982 it won the Yugoslavian Young Writers Award. Soon after, she wrote a sequel to this story called Looking for Jane Eyre. In 1992, Cubrilo moved to Sydney and continued to write short stories and novels. In 1999 the novel As a River (Fiume Corre-Rijeka Tece) was published by Croatian publisher Adamic in her native town of Rijeka. The book received good critiques in Croatian and Italian press. After the Croatian book launch, an Australian one followed. In 2000, the next novel was published, Requiem for Barbara. The book was launched in both Croatia and Sydney. In 2001, a new novel, Little Lies, Big Lies, was published by the same publisher. This was the first volume of a trilogy called Spanish Stories. Cubrilo had obtained a scholarship from the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to travel to Andalucia to research the cultural and historical settings of Cadiz. Cubrilo has written two more novels but she stopped writing and publishing when she encountered serious health issues and the disintegration of her marriage. When she recovered she was able to translate her experiences into a new novel, The Mosaic of the Broken Soul. Over the last 18 years, Cubrilo has worked as a journalist for various local newspapers in Sydney, writing articles and short stories and conducting interviews. One of her novels was serialized in the magazine Women 21. Cubrilo also worked as a radio producer in Eastside Radios Sydney and Special Broadcasting Services-SBS Sydney, where she has produced a number of programs and series, conducted many interviews and written short stories. Cubrilo now writes in English and is also translating her earlier novels into English. She lives in Sydney with her daughter Althea.