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From the Heart of Europe:
An Anthology of Contemporary Slovenian Writing
edited by Evald Flisar
$16 paperback
2007, 217 pages, 8.3 x 5.5
ISBN: 978-0971206182
Available through Amazon.com
or directly from Texture Press.
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Praise for From the Heart of Europe: An Anthology of Contemporary Slovenian Writing
“This collection is a heterogeneous combination of various Slovene literary works, considering the span of the authors’ ages (the youngest was born in 1971 and the oldest in 1956), the genre and literary forms (from short stories, novellas, novelettes, and excerpts from novels to children’s literature), the numerous works by individual authors (most of them with one text, Lainšček with three fairytales, and Morovič with five short stories), and also its typological diversity, which speaks in its favor in today’s hyperactive and complex world of globalization and individualization.”
—Alenka Žbogar, University of Ljubljana
(read the full review)
“These assorted writings depict themes of self-confidence, self-identity, loneliness, rebellion, dysfunctional families, death and maltreatment; skirmishing untoward probabilities of life. The stories speak about various struggles, cruel judgments and prejudices that an individual faces in time.”
—Goodreads
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Slovenes, (the people who form ) a nation of two million in the heart of Europe, achieved independence for the first time in their long history with the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991. Having settled in the Alps in the sixth century AD, they succeeded in preserving their language, identity and culture largely through poetry and fiction: their greatest national hero is not a general but a romantic poet. With the arrival of independent statehood and membership of the European Union and NATO, Slovenian literature has been freed of its function as the guardian of national identity and is now allowed to explore the realm of literary imagination without the former burdens of attendant duties. While not ignoring their great literary tradition of the past centuries, contemporary Slovenian authors no longer concern themselves predominantly with national issues; their writing is personal, inventive and open outward, even cosmopolitan, yet without losing its specific Central European flavor.
The thirteen stories by thirteen leading Slovenian authors selected for this anthology have all it takes to make the reader turn the pages: style, suspense, irony, dark secrets, intellectual game playing, emotional charge, human warmth, and more.
Evald Flisar has written twelve plays, all of which have been professionally staged in Slovenia and many of them abroad. He also writes novels, short stories, and essays. He edits the oldest Slovenian literary journal Sodobnost, published since 1933. He studied comparative literature at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and English in London, where he lived for 17 years, editing (among other things) an encyclopedia of science. In addition, Flisar also wrote stories and radio plays for the BBC. From 1995 to 2002, he was president of the Slovene Writers’ Association. Translated into 24 languages (among them Finnish, Icelandic, Greek, Arabic, Malay, Bengali, Marathi and Hindi), his work has been read publicly worldwide, from Australia to the United States, from South America to Scandinavia. His cult novel Going away with the wild tiger (Carovnikov vajenec) has been reprinted six times. Two of his books, My Father’s Dreams (a novel) and Tales of Wandering (short stories) have been published in the United States. He has also written highly-praised travel books (he has traveled in over eighty countries and would like to visit another eighty before he dies).
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