The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Bastašić, Lana. Catch the Rabbit. Restless Books, 2021.

Catch the Rabbit takes place both in early 2000s, with frequent flashbacks to Sara and Lejla's war-torn childhood in what is now Bosnia. The novel is told from the first person perspective of Sara, whose frequent flashbacks flesh out the lives of both her and her childhood best friend, Lejla Beric. The plot kicks off when Lejla calls Sara after twelve years of silence, telling her that her brother Armin - who also happens to be Sara's first love - is in Vienna, and that the two of them need to drive from Bosnia to pick him up.

Section 1 of the novel sets the stage of Sara's life: she is living in Dublin with her boyfriend Michael, a sweet but lackluster fellow from whom she always feels slightly distant. Lejla's call sparks a series of flashbacks, including to the night she and Lejla both lost their virginities to high school boys at prom. Sara flies from Dublin to Zagreb and then catches a bus to Mostar, where she plans to meet Lejla. As she looks at the natives, Sara realizes how far she has come from her traumatic, war-torn past. "I'm healthy, I come from Ireland, I have Michael, and I'm on my way to Mostar because I've got enough money to support Lejla's whims" (46-47). The section ends with Sara's nervous anticipation of her reunion with Lejla.

Section 2 opens with a flashback to the darkness of Sara and Lejla's childhood. Dogs are dying, darkness is setting in, and war is in the air: "dogs fell: Mrs. Talic's pug, the bulldog from that overgrown yard next to the school, my neighbor's ugly greyhound" (51). Sara recalls the moment she fell in love with Armin, both when he asked her interesting questions at a childhood birthday party and when he pulled her hair from her ponytail and treated her with tender kindness. She finally meets Lejla, who works as a waitress in a restaurant. The road trip begins.

Section 3 begins with Sara and Lejla stopping in Jajce with a friend of Lejla's. They visit the catacombs and the AVNOJ museum. The catacombs are bleak, and the AVNOJ museum is an insulting and pathetic attempt to preserve a tragic heritage. Sara and Lejla pretend not to be offended, but they cannot help feeling insulted. "Plaster was peeling off the walls. A plastic Disneyland, unworthy of the fairytales that preceded it. A happy-meal Yugoslavia" (128). Sara also recalls her school days and how she always longed for peer approval more than Lejla, citing one time when she even killed a sparrow just to impress a popular boy.

Section 4 shows Sara and Lejla stopping in their home town of Mostar on their way to Vienna. Sara sees her mother for the first time in years and refuses to go up and visit her, feeling only disgust and horror at her mother's disgusting, obese body. She recalls her college years with Lejla, reminiscing on how Lejla became a radically promiscuous troublemaker while she wrote for literary magazines and developed a writing career. Then, after the visit to Mostar is over, they stop in a hostel in Zagreb, where the reminisce together and get along.

Section 5 reveals that Lejla has, in fact, never known where Armin is, nor had any kind of plan for how to get in touch with him. She takes Sara to a museum in Vienna where Albrecht Durer's "Young Hare" is on display. Sara remembers Lejla telling her a story of how Armin touched the painting as a little boy. Lejla touches it now, and then runs away, not even expecting Sara to follow. The novel ends mid-sentence, with the words "Your lips were moving. I couldn't hear them, but I read them. They said: I only wanted" (248). The links to the first sentence of the novel, which also opens mid-sentence: "to start at the beginning. You have someone and then you don't" (1). This gives the novel a circular, wonderland-esque feel.