The latest addition to my website is Sebastijan Pregelj‘s V Elvisovi sobi (In Elvis’s Room). This is definitely a book of two halves. It starts as a Bildungsroman, telling the story of Jan, initially a young boy in Yugoslavia, living in Ljubljana in the 980s. We follow all the issues of his growing-up but, at … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ana Schnabl‘s Mojstrovina (The Masterpiece). The novel is set primarily in 1985, five years after Tito’s death but with Slovenia still part of Yugoslavia and the communists in control. Adam, a university lecturer, has written a novel (called Masterpiece) which he has submitted to Ana, an editor at … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mitja Čander‘s Slepec (Blind Man). Our hero is not blind but, because of a defect at birth, has very poor sight. He works as a book editor and sticks to the areas he knows but is suddenly asked to speak for a new political party and then offered … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Katja Perat‘s Mazohistka (The Masochist). The novel is narrated by Nadezhda von Moser. She was found as a baby, abandoned, in a basket by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the man whom Richard von Krafft-Ebing named masochism after. Sacher-Masoch brought her up but he was neither a good father or … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ivan Cankar‘s Hiša Marije Pomočnice (The Ward of Our Lady of Mercy). Cankar is often considered the father of the modern Slovenian novel. This is a very sad story, set entirely in a charity ward for girls in a Viennese hospital. All the girls have some unpleasant disease … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Aleš Šteger‘s Odpusti (Absolution). This is a very funny book in the great East European tradition of using humour to damn the political system. Adam Bely (formerly of Maribor) and Rosa Portero (formerly of Cuba) are both living in Austria and working for Austrian radio and are nominally … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Dušan Šarotar‘s Panorama (Panorama). This is a superb meditative novel, along the lines of the work of W G Sebald and Claudio Magris, though very much of its own kind. It is more poetical work than those, and makes extensive uses of photographs. Our narrator travels to Galway … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Feri Lainšček‘s Namesto koga roža cveti (Instead Of Whom Does The Flower Bloom). Lainšček grew up in north-eastern Slovenia (then Yugoslavia) near Roma villages and got to know the Roma people. These book is about a Roma family and their neighbours. Halgato (it is a type of gypsy … Read more