Lojze Kovacic (1928-2004)
Inspired by the modern works of Proust, Woolf and Kafka, Lojze Kovacic has erected a powerful Slovenian voice in the modern literary canon. His works articulate the limits of the human condition in an introspective and highly philosophical manner, whilst also exploring the morality of wartime. Although born in Switzerland, Kovacic moved to Ljubljana as a small child with his German mother and Slovene father; he went on to graduate from the University of Ljubljana where he read both German and Slovak studies. Published between 1983 and 1985, The Newcomers trilogy remains Kovacic’s personal masterpiece, and a cornerstone of the Slovenian literary canon. Told through the eyes of a young boy as he matures into a man upon his military recruitment, The Newcomers is an often explicit and heart-wrenching story of brutal oppression at the hands of cruel political regimes. Upon their forced departure from their homeland, the protagonist’s family is subjected to a vicious rejection based on their mixed heritage (German and Slovene), and is forced into the lowest realms of poverty and degradation. As the acclaimed recipient of the Prešeren Award in 1973 and a double winner of the Kresnik Award in 1991 and 2004, Kovacic was an accomplished author of both children’s and adult’s fiction, who left a luminescent literary legacy following his death in 2004.
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Vitomil Zupan (1914-1987)
Vitomil Zupan’s Minuet for Guitar is a complex narrative consisting of two interwoven strands in the life of a character named Berk. The recreated memories of his time spent as a guerilla solider in military service during WWII are juxtaposed with a meeting with a near forgotten adversary whom he encounters during a holiday in Western Europe. Combining Central European history with a narrative exploration of war and its detrimental effects on the psyche of man, Minuet for Guitar is a celebrated contribution to Slovenia’s contemporary literary canon.
Vlado Zabot (1958-)
Vlado Žabot is an inspired writer whose fiction brilliantly explores realms of the paranoid and the unspoken. Žabot’s short fiction delivers free flowing fantasies of narrative in a seemingly limitless dreamlike state. Dalkey Archives Press recently published Žabot’s The Succubus, a superb collection of short stories presenting fictional taboos in his mesmerizing poetic prose that titillates, intrigues, challenges and often terrifies.
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Andrej Blatnik (1963-)
Author of a trio of critically acclaimed novels as well as various essay collections, an academic and scholar of American literature and translator of international fiction including Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Andrej Blatnik is contemporary Slovenian literature’s jack of all trades. His latest work translated to English, Do You Understand, is a disjointed collection of fictional bits and bobs that range from reimagined fairy tales to small descriptive fragments depicting intimate moments in human’s lives.
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Source link : https://theculturetrip.com/europe/slovenia/articles/at-the-crossroads-of-europe-an-introduction-to-slovenian-literature
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Publish date : 2021-08-13 07:00:00
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