Literary Cooperative United Authors and Translators
RIGHTS CATALOGUE 2017
Polica Dubova Cultural and Artistic Association Polica Dubova Cultural and Artistic Association publishes books and e-books in fields of literature and humanities, and organizes cultural events in Slovenia and in the international arena. We are aware of the importance of knowledge/know-how which we constantly keep enriching and developing, and also of creative approach which enables us to keep generating new ideas and finding original solutions. The Association is friendly to readers and event visitors (high quality of books and events), authors and translators (fair payment), nature and society (ecological awareness and high ethical principles).
Literary Cooperative United Authors and Translators Literary Cooperative: United Authors and Translators is an initiative connecting poets, writers and literary translators from all over Europe, and also other continents, by principles of self-organization and solidarity.
Echoes of Realities Echoes of Realities is a literary translation project implemented by Polica Dubova Cultural and Artistic Association and co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. From the project description:
Contact: KUD Police Dubove Vnanje Gorice, Nova pot 142 SI-1351 Brezovica pri Ljubljani Slovenia drustvo@policadubova.org http://policadubova.org
Contemporary philosophers, social scientists, and artists have already indicated that we cannot consider reality as a determined singular entity with mono-causal logic and universal validity. On the contrary, a multiform phenomenon of reality, contextually sensitive and highly specific at the same time, is always represented according to the observer – his/her perspective and his/her perceptive categories. The project Echoes of Realities came out of these multicultural reflections and objections. It deals with contemporary re-evaluation of cultural patterns and habits in post-socialist and post-nationalist, multicultural world. Its aim is to juxtapose different social identities (minorities, migrants, refugees, women, homosexuals, diasporas, subcultural groups) as captured in literary narratives, and rethink the ties between complex realities of various social environments and their multiple and often also divergent ways of representation. The title of the project thus stresses this connection between social (reality) and personal representation (echo).
Contents Marica Bodrožić 4 A Cherrywood Table 5 Radka Denemarková 6 A Contribution to the History of Joy 7 Kobold: An Abundance of Tenderness / An Abundance of People 8 Money from Hitler 9 Death, Thou Shall not Be Afraid: The Story of Petr Lébl 10 Devil by the Nose 11 Jacek Dukaj 12 Ice 13 An Ideal Imperfection 14 Other Songs 15 The Old Axolotl 16 Bojan Ekselenski 17 Eleila’s Rise 18 The Fall of the Saints 18 Knights and Wizards: The Cave of Secrets 19 The Lubliana Gymnasium of Magic 19 Jerzy Franczak 20 The Fitting Room 21 The Inhuman Comedy 21 Da capo 22 NN 23 Goran Janković 24 On the Barren Hill above the Road 25 Alenka Jensterle-Doležal 26 The Meaning of the House 27 Ignacy Karpowicz 28 Fish Bones 29 Vesna Lemaić 30 Popular Stories 31 The Dumping Ground 31 A Chicken and Birds 32 Jan Němec 33 A History of Light 34 Ben Okri 35 The Famished Road 36 Iztok Osojnik 37 Ten of Hearts 39 Melinda Podgorny: An Attempt to Investigate Why I Did Not Kill Maks Cankar 39 Pigs Fly into Sky 40 A Narrative about Dušan Pirjevec and Me 40 Dark Matter, or Notes about Insomnia 41 Minoli Salgado 42 A Little Dust on the Eyes 43 Sabina Štrubelj 44 Lavender Hotel 45 The Lady in Grey 45 Olga Tokarczuk 46 The Books of Jacob 47
Marica Bodrožić (Croatia / Germany) Marica Bodrožić was born in 1973 in Svib, Croatia, in former Yugoslavia. She moved to Germany at the age of ten and learned German, which she now sees as her “second mother tongue”. German also became her language for creating literature. Bodrožić writes essays, novels, poems, and stories; works as a literary translator; teaches creative writing, among other places, in high schools and colleges; and has made a documentary film. Her novel, A Cherrywood Table, has received consistently favourable reviews from critics and readers, who called it, “a poetic work that thoroughly explores memory and remembrance.” OUTSTANDING AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS 2015 Konrad Adenauer Literature Prize 2013 European Union Literature Prize 2013 Kranichsteiner Literaturpreis Photo by Peter von Felbert 2013 LiteraTour Nord Prize 2011 Liechtenstein Prize for Literature (Poetry Section) 2009 Special Prize for Outstanding Emerging Artists awarded by the Bruno Heck Prize Scholarship 2008 Initiative Prize 2007 Literary Award of the Academy of the Arts in Berlin 2002 Heimito von Doderer Prize 2001 Hermann Lenz Award BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR Das Wasser unserer Träume. Luchterhand Verlag, 2016 Das Auge hinter dem Auge. Poetikvorlesungen, Otto Müller Verlag, 2015 Mein weißer Frieden, Luchterhand Verlag, 2014 Kirschholz und alte Gefühle, Luchterhand Verlag, 2012 The Memory of the Dragonflies, Luchterhand Verlag, 2010 Quince Hours, Otto Müller Verlag, 2011 Lichtorgeln. Gedichte, Otto Müller Verlag, 2008 The Wind Collector, Suhrkamp Verlag 2007 Inherit Stars, Colour Stars. My Arrival in Words, Suhrkamp Verlag, 2007 Ein Kolibri kam unverwandelt. Gedichte, Otto Müller Verlag, 2007 Der Spieler der inneren Stunde, Suhrkamp Verlag, 2005 Tito Is Dead. Suhrkamp Verlag, 2002
Official site: https://www.marica-bodrozic.de
Agent / Rights Director: Gesche Wendebourg Gesche.Wendebourg@Randomhouse.de 4
FICTION
Marica Bodrožić
A Cherrywood Table Kirschholz und alte Gefühle The civil war in former Yugoslavia has robbed a young woman, Arjeta Filipo, of her homeland. When she finds some old photographs during a change of residence, she suddenly understands much of her own life story that had long seemed obscure. So Arjeta follows up once again the ruptures in her consciousness and her life—and the ruptures in the world. Arjeta can dissociate herself from many things, but not from her grandmother’s table. Now she sits at this inherited piece of furniture in her new Berlin apartment and spreads out photographs over it that have come into her hands when she moved. Memories begin to surface, as if the cherry wood table offers up all the stories it bore witness to through the years. Date of publication: 2012 Pages: 192 Category: contemporary fiction Rights sold to: Dituria, Albania BTC Sahinpasic, Bosnia and Herzegovina Perseus, Bulgaria Fraktura, Croatia ILI-ILI, FYROM Elf Publishing House, Georgia Napkut, Hungary Mimesis, Italy De Geus, Netherlands Heliks, Serbia KUD Police Dubove, Slovenia
There’s the besieged city, Istria, the sea of her childhood and youth, and her escapes at the beginning of the 90s that changed everything. But mostly it is about the time in Paris where she studied philosophy and started a new life in a new language—together with Arik, a painter she fell in love with against her will. Misha Weisband, an ornithologist, became her confidant, while Nadezhda, a physicist, is her closest friend. There is a secret that ties the two women together, but also separates them—a secret that only Arik knows and keeps for many years. Not until they both confront the blind spots in their inner lives do they manage to find their way to the truth.
English synopsis available. English sample available.
Official site: https://www.marica-bodrozic.de
Agent / Rights Director: Gesche Wendebourg Gesche.Wendebourg@Randomhouse.de
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Radka Denemarková (Czech Republic) Radka Denemarková, born 1968, is a Czech novelist, dramatist, TV screenplay writer, translator, essayist, teacher of creative writing. The only Czech writer who has received Magnesia Litera prize three times (in different categories – for prose, non-fiction and translation). She studied German and Czech at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, gaining her doctorate in 1997. She worked as a researcher at the Institute for Czech Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and was dramatic advisor at the Na zábradlí theatre in Prague. She has been freelance since 2004. She is the author of Being My Own Enemy (1998; a monograph about theatre and film director Evald Schorm), Remembering Milena Honzíková (2003; in: Dopis zmizelému/A Letter to the One Who Disappeared) and is the editor of the anthology Zlatá šedesátá/The Golden Sixties (2000). Her debut work of fiction The Devil by the Nose was published in 2005, followed a year Photo by Petr Kopřiva later by the novel Money from Hitler (winner of the prestigious Magnesia Litera prize for the year’s best work of prose). The Polish edition of the latter work was nominated for the Angelus Prize (2009), while the German edition Ein herrlicher Flecken Erde (DVA 2011) won the Usedom Prize for Literature (2011) and Georg Dehio Prize (2012). For the monograph Death, Thou Shall Not Be Afraid: The Story of Petr Lébl (2008) she won a Magnesia Litera for the year’s best work of nonfiction. In 2010 the Na zábradlí theatre produced her play Sleeping Disorders. For her rendering of Nobel Prize winner Herta Müller’s Atemschaukel (Czech: Rozhoupaný dech), Radka Denemarková won the 2011 Magnesia Litera for translation of the year. Her double novel Kobold: An Abundance of Tenderness / An Abundance of People was published in 2011. In autumn 2014 she published a novel A Contribution to History of Joy. Her book US 2 (2014) was filmed (directed by Slobodanka Radun). Radka Denemarková’s works have been translated into 19 languages. She lives in Prague with daughter Ester and son Jan. OUTSTANDING AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS 2007 Magnesia Litera Prize for the best prose work of the year 2009 Magnesia Litera Prize for the best non-fiction book 2011 Usedomer Literaturpreis 2011 Magnesia Litera Prize for the best translation 2012 Georg-Dehio-Buchpreis 2016 WALD Press AWARD 2017 “Graz City Writer 2017/2018”
Official site: https://denemarkova.cz
Agent / Rights Director: Peter S. Fritz pfritz@fritzagency.com
BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR Novels 2014 Příspěvek k dějinám radosti / A Contribution to the History of Joy. 2011 Kobold: Přebytky něhy & Přebytky lidí / Kobold: An Abundance of Tenderness & An Abundance of People. 2008 Smrt, nebudeš se báti aneb příběh Petra Lébla / Death, Thou Shall Not Be Afraid: The Story Of Petr Lébl. 2006 Peníze od Hitlera / Money from Hitler. 2005 A já pořád kdo to tluče / The Devil by the Nose. Other 2014 MY 2 / US 2. A literary original for the feature film. 2012 Spací vady / Sleeping Disorders. 2012. A theatre play. 1988 Sám sobě nepřítelem / An enemy to Himself. A monograph. 6
FICTION
Radka Denemarková
A Contribution to the History of Joy Příspěvek k dějinám radosti The body of a wealthy middle-aged businessman is found in his luxury villa in Prague. Initially nothing suggests foul play but the man’s widow insists it couldn’t possibly be suicide. As he begins to investigate, the policeman finds himself attracted to the young and beautiful widow. A trail leads him to an orange house with a red roof on Prague’s Petřín hill, inhabited by three extraordinary elderly women: a yoga instructor, a filmmaker, and a teacher of creative writing. While the old ladies are away on some mysterious business, the policeman sneaks into their house. In the basement he discovers a vast archive of documents dating back to World War II.
Date of publication: 2014 Pages: 334 Category: contemporary fiction Rights sold to: KUD Police Dubove, Slovenia Amaltea, Poland Sovera/Aspasia, Italy Galaxia Gutenberg, Spain Nauka, Bulgaria Strik, Serbia Flower City Publishing, China
What connects the murder case with the three women and their treasure trove documenting thousands of cases of rape and abuse? Will the family of the young Indian woman who died after being gang-raped ever get justice? Will the ringleaders of the gang in the north of England who groomed young girls and forced them into prostitution ever be convicted for their crimes? Or is vigilante justice the only possible response to such evil? Only twittering swallows, roaming freely from continent to continent, have the answers and can make all the connections from their bird’s eye view. Disguised as a crime novel and combining fact and fiction, Radka Denemarková’s fourth novel is a passionate indictment of all forms of violence against women whenever and wherever it occurs.
English synopsis available. English sample available.
From reviews Disguised as a crime mystery set in Prague and mixing fact and fiction, A Contribution to the History of Joy (Příspěvek k dějinám radosti, 2014) is a passionate indictment of all forms of violence against women everywhere, spanning the past 70 years of history. Editors of the Asymptote From the author’s interview The status of women and men is what I regard as the key problem. It still makes a difference whether you are born in a woman’s skin or a man’s. Radka Denemarková, The Missing Slate (http://themissingslate.com)
Official site: https://denemarkova.cz
Agent / Rights Director: Peter S. Fritz pfritz@fritzagency.com 7
FICTION
Radka Denemarková
Kobold: An Abundance of Tenderness / An Abundance of People Kobold: Přebytky něhy / Přebytky lidí Prague, Christmas 1941. Michael Kobold, a man obsessed with the river Vltava and Charles Bridge, tries to put a coat on the statue of St. John Nepomuk. Man and statue tumble into the freezing river. In the ensuing commotion, 17-year-old budding writer Hella, a sensitive girl from a well-to-do Jewish family, jumps off the Bridge to avoid being crushed by the crowd. In the rescue boat she encounters and falls for Kobold, halfman and half-water goblin, and marries him against the wishes of her family. She escapes being deported with her parents to a concentration camp, only to end up in the prison of a destructive marriage. Date of publication: 2011 Pages: 327 Category: contemporary fiction Rights sold to: Książkowe Klimaty, Poland Modrijan, Slovenia Manuskripte, Austria English synopsis available. English and German sample available.
Prague, early 21st century. Hella’s and Kobold’s daughter returns to her native city after many years abroad and recalls the devastating impact her parents’ relationship and the fateful river had had on herself and her younger twin brothers. A working-class neighbourhood on the outskirts of Prague, present day. Justýna, an unemployed young Roma single mother is desperately trying to make ends meet and keep custody of her nine children. The only person who is genuinely fond of her and secretly tries to help is a lonely, disabled funeral parlour attendant. However, amidst a newly prosperous, indifferent society neither of the two unfortunate, marginalized characters stands a chance. Kobold is two stories in one, water and fire, two elements in one. It is left to the reader to decide which part to read first, and the link between the stories and characters is revealed only gradually. Abundance of Tenderness, the longer of the two stories, is a powerful indictment of domestic violence and the totalitarian undercurrents lurking within individuals and families. The second and shorter story, Abundance of People, is a passionate condemnation of a society that has lost all sense of solidarity with the less fortunate, pushing them to the margins as if they suffered from a contagious disease. This society, Radka Denemarková believes, is the breeding ground for ‘Kobolds’’people who are highly intelligent but with zero emotional intelligence and zero social empathy’. By manipulating others these people reach the top at lightning speed. ‘My novel encompasses a plethora of themes, including totalitarianism.’ From reviews
Official site: https://denemarkova.cz
Agent / Rights Director: Peter S. Fritz pfritz@fritzagency.com
Kobold by Radka Denemarková with no hesitation! A novel and novelette in one volume, two connected stories of utmost evil dwelling within us. As always, a book by the translator of Herta Müller and Michael Stavarič is both demanding and painful to read. Heart-breaking gravity, breath-taking lightness, water and fire. Blood chilling fates of a stunning half-gypsy, an amazing mother of nine well-behaved children versus/plus accounts of an old woman about the father, the cruel tyrant, who … This book by author of prose and drama and Magnesia Litera prize winner is as powerful as Sestra by Jáchym Topol. Great novels however, experiments packed with sensitivity, are rarely appreciated nowadays. Kateřina Kadlecová, Reflex 8
FICTION
Radka Denemarková
Money from Hitler Peníze od Hitlera 16-year-old Gita Lauschmannová, who grew up in a German-speaking, assimilated Jewish family in a Czech village, returns from a Nazi concentration camp at the end of the war. Now an orphan, she hopes for a warm welcome but instead finds a hostile reception from her father’s former employees who have taken possession of her family’s property and moved into her family’s house. Denouncing her for speaking German and labelling her a Nazi, they put her through a terrifying ordeal. Only narrowly escaping being murdered, Gita is lumped together with the Germans being driven out of Czechoslovakia. She manages to escape again and makes her way to her only surviving relative, an aunt in Prague. Date of publication: 2006 Pages: 242 Category: contemporary fiction Rights sold to: Európa, Hungary Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT, Poland DVA, Germany Women's Press, Canada Modrijan, Slovenia Keller, Italy Elias Canetti, Bulgaria Galaxia Gutenberg, Spain Begemot, Macedonia Aspekt Vörlag, Sweden Editions du Bord de l’eau, France Flower City Publishing House, China Hena Com, Croatia Ejal, Albania English synopsis available. English sample available.
Official site: https://denemarkova.cz
Agent / Rights Director: Peter S. Fritz pfritz@fritzagency.com
Following the end of communism, Gita Lauschmannová – now a retired doctor – returns to the village to seek justice and an apology. But again the locals, terrified that she wants to recover her long-lost property, close ranks against her. Her only – unlikely – ally turns out to be the son of the family that had driven her out. Is it possible to get justice for barbaric acts? Can old wrongs be righted? Gita is the victim of racist, anti-Semitic, and political prejudice and collective guilt. Money from Hitler is a harrowing story infused with the power of a classical tragedy. It is a timeless story of persecution and expulsion, and the futility of the struggle for justice. Radka Denemarková’s second novel won the Magnesia Litera for fiction, Czech Republic’s most prestigious literary prize, in 2007. From reviews Six chapters, six attempts to return home to the place of the happy prewar childhood of Gita Lauschmann, whose family only learned about their Jewish heritage when they were dragged into the concentration camps. The first attempt opens the second and longer post-war act of the historical tragedy: the villagers are trying, by confiscating Gita’s family’s property and land, to get rid of two children who returned from the camp. They manage to kill and bury the boy, but Gita survives. The sombre shadow of the murder and of the unjust theft brings the villagers close together. When, sixty years later, Gita reappears one summer, they are scared and refuse to accept her as one of them, even though she does not intend to get her property back, but only seeks a symbolic expression of justice for her father. The five summertime returns show Gita how difficult it is to admit to being guilty of a crime, especially when a whole village participated in it. Great, dark and very current story, reaching the depths of an ancient drama. From Magnesia Litera jury’s justification Reading Money from Hitler (Peníze od Hitlera) is a mind shattering experience. The novella tells a classical story of persecution and expulsion, but also of a fight for justice. Radka Denemarková has made a major contribution, with a literary mastery, to the extensive chronicles of the history of German-Czech-Jewish relationships. From Georg Dehio Prize jury’s justification
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FICTION
Radka Denemarková
Death, Thou Shall not Be Afraid: The Story of Petr Lébl Smrt, nebudeš se báti aneb příběh Petra Lébla
Date of publication: 2008 Pages: 646 Category: contemporary fiction English synopsis available. English sample available.
Death, thou shall not be afraid, or the story of Petr Lébl by Radka Denemarková reads as a big novel, but its core lies in everyday writings. Using correspondence, diaries, historical documents, personal experience and eyewitness memories, the author has created something in a style of an extensive biographical reportage in which she deals in detail not only with the Icarus-like fate of a gifted playwright, but also depicts the changes in the spirit of the times from mid-eighties till the end of the nineties. The portrayal of recent history is presented not only through the artist’s biography, but also by interpretation of his stage plays, where the Zeitgeist could be seen in poetic and visual shortcuts and free associations and metaphors. The book also deals with the timeless topic of a strong personality, whose extraordinary charisma and talent stemmed in part from a mental disease. The author was able to balance a romantic approach with a critical one: she has not simplified the problem, but allowed it to sound out in its full complicity. It is quite obvious from the text that her pursuit of finding an appropriate form for Lebl’s story was long and demanding. That is part of the reason she created such an unusual piece of work, unparalleled so far in our literature. From Magnesia Litera jury’s justification From reviews Could be read as an unusual fact-based testimony to a double struggle to find one’s own identity: at first the struggle of the novel’s main character, and later, deeper into the text, also the struggle of the novel’s author herself. Viola Fischerová
Official site: https://denemarkova.cz
Agent / Rights Director: Peter S. Fritz pfritz@fritzagency.com 10
FICTION
Radka Denemarková
Devil by the Nose A já pořád kdo to tluče Aging star theatre director Petr Buch returns to Prague after decades in German exile to stage a keenly anticipated new play by celebrated playwright Birgit Stadtherrová. As lines in the play reawaken painful memories from his past, Buch – whose father had been a feared secret police interrogator in the 1950s – is anxious to meet the writer and find out how she discovered his darkest secret.
Date of publication: 2005 Pages: 178 Category: contemporary fiction Rights sold to: Európa, Hungary KUD Police Dubove, Slovenia
English synopsis available. English sample available.
Pragmatic theatre dramaturg Klamová uses every trick in the book to placate the increasingly impatient Buch and entice the neurotic Birgit out of her seclusion. She enlists the playwright’s self-sacrificing, sweetnatured stepsister Johanka but Birgit stubbornly refuses to come to the theatre, switching off her phone and reliving her traumatic childhood and abuse suffered at the hands of her cruel mother. Will the two protagonists ever meet? Will the ill-fated play ever open? Radka Denemarková, herself a playwright who had also worked as dramaturg at the famous Theatre on the Balustrade in Prague, channels her own experience of the theatre to depict the agonies suffered by creative artists, debunk the cult of star directors, and poke fun at petty rivalries among prima donna actors. Their shenanigans are juxtaposed with the painstaking work of hard-working staff behind the scenes whose empathy and patient diplomatic efforts gently steer the creative chaos to a triumphant opening night. Awards 2005 Europäisches Festival des Debütromans (European Festival of Novel Debuts) in Kiel, Germany.
Official site: https://denemarkova.cz
Agent / Rights Director: Peter S. Fritz pfritz@fritzagency.com 11
Jacek Dukaj (Poland) Jacek Dukaj, born 1974, is today’s most distinguished Polish sciencefiction writer, a successor of Stanisław Lem. He studied philosophy at the Jagiellonian University. The European Literary Award (2009) shows that the merit of his work transcends a narrowly defined genre. His short stories have been translated into English, Russian, Czech, Hungarian, Italian, Slovak, Ukrainian, and Macedonian. He is known for the complexity of his books, and it is often said that a single Dukaj’s short story contains more ideas than many other writers put into their books in their lifetime. Popular themes in his works include the technological singularity, nanotechnology, and virtual reality, and his books are thus often classified as hard science fiction. Among his favourite writers is Australian writer Greg Egan, and Dukaj's books bear some resemblance to Egan's, or to the likes of Neal Stephenson's, although his stylistic brio makes him as much a ‘literary’ as a ‘hard science fiction’ writer - allowing for comparisons with the Photo by Anna Zemanek books of Thomas Pynchon or David Mitchell. OUTSTANDING AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS 2009 European Literary Award 2008 Kościelski Prize 2007 Shortlisted for the Nike Literary Prize 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2007, 2010 Janusz A. Zajdel Award BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR Novels 2001 Czarne oceany / Black Oceans 2002 Extensa 2003 Inne pieśni / Other Songs 2004 Perfekcyjna niedoskonałość / An Ideal Imperfection 2007 Lód / Ice 2009 Wroniec / The Crowe 2015 Starość aksolotla / The Old Axolotl Short story collections 2004 Xavras Wyżryn i inne fikcje narodowe / Xavras Wyżryn and Other National Fictions 2000 W kraju niewiernych / In the Land of Unbelievers 2010 Król Bólu / King of Pain From reviews
Official site: http://www.dukaj.pl
Agent / Rights Director: Anna Rucińska, anna.rucinska@nurnberg.pl
In science-fiction, as in other literary genres, there are authors the record-players and authors the conductors; those who re-create and those who create. The former shamelessly keep on playing the same tunes, the latter will not rest until they have invented a new tune. Brimming with the wildest of ideas, they are the predators of literature and – unlike slow-moving ruminants – its driving force. [...] This elite group has been joined by Jacek Dukaj, whose perhaps greatest strength lies in his talent for coming up with ideas nobody else has thought about. And in the field as thoroughly ploughed as science-fiction, fresh and original ideas are bordering on the miraculous. Marek Oramus, Nowa Fantastyka 12
FICTION
Jacek Dukaj
Ice Lód A peculiar inventor and the Polish Siberian partisans, a pomp of logic and mathematics of characters, shame theory and friendship theory, Polish businessmen and Tungus shamans, investigation intrigue and a real romance (which wasn’t there). Ice hang-outs and cold-iron parlours, black physics and a Siberian tale, friendship, death and betrayal. Life as a particular form of a window pane frozen flower. A thousand paged Opus Magnum which has divided Jacek Dukaj’s enthusiasts into the Ice fraction and Other Songs fraction.
Date of publication: 2007 Pages: 1054 Category: science fiction Rights sold to: Head of Zeus, U.K. Ergo, Bulgaria Begemot, Macedonia Kontrast, Serbia Astrolabe, Ukraine Host, Czech Republic English synopsis available. English sample available.
The action of Jacek Dukaj’s sprawling new novel starts off in Warsaw, moves to the first-class luxury cars of the Trans-Siberian railroad, then finally to Siberia in the vicinity of Irkutsk. Events are set in 1924, but this is an alternative history, a fantastic history. The Tungus meteorite impact of 1908 has caused the bulk of Russian territory to be covered in ice, as a result of which the First World War did not break out, there was no October Revolution, Tsar Nicholas II still reigns, and Poland is still partitioned. Customs, fashion, orthography – none of these have changed since the beginning of the century. The tsar, however, would like to push back the ice and for this reason his officials send a Pole, Benedykt Gierosławski, to Siberia. Gierosławski’s father, in exile in Siberia, has succumbed to an extraordinary metamorphosis and – himself turned to ice – is apparently able to communicate with the mysterious quasi-beings who are causing the abnormal drop in temperature. Benedict is to seek out his father and secure his cooperation in getting rid of the ice. This project meets with strong resistance from those who have made fortunes on the freezing-over of Siberia – the low temperatures are conducive to the formation of numerous new materials upon which new branches of industry are based. Thanks to this, Siberia is growing into an economic superpower, and religious sects for whom the frost heralds a new renaissance of the spirit are also flourishing. The fierce battle between the novel’s factions is fought on political, economic, mythological, and religious terrain. Jerzy Jarzębski From reviews
Official site: http://www.dukaj.pl
The complexity of the novel cannot be summarised in a few sentences: as well as a fascinating panorama of social relations, of the madness of the coming 20th century and of the Polish-Russian Hassliebe, it is a philosophical discourse on accidentality and determinism, chaos and order, entropy and logic. At the same time, it is a beautiful vivisection of human identity, an analysis of the thin layer of our being that we magnanimously call ‘I’. Ice is a novel which is not really fit for our times. No wonder, it may be perhaps the last of the grand 19th century novels that has somehow got lost in our century. Piotr Kofta
Agent / Rights Director: Anna Rucińska, anna.rucinska@nurnberg.pl
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Jacek Dukaj
An Ideal Imperfection Perfekcyjna niedoskonałość
Date of publication: 2004 Pages: 380 Category: science fiction Rights sold to: AST, Russia English synopsis available. English sample available.
It’s the twenty-ninth century and everything in our galaxy has changed. Travelling about the cosmos is no longer a problem, because space is now subject to non-gravitational modelling. Power is concentrated in the hands of the creatures gifted with the highest intelligence. So is this the perfect universe? It’s ideally imperfect, answers Dukaj. This world has been created by humans striving for security, in other words an existence free from fears of death, illness, and war. However, instead of an immortal body, these incarnations have been invented, and instead of tolerance and mutual respect there are galactic governments run by the highest intelligence. Reason has proved to be a life force jostling for supremacy, but supremacy is still rooted in biological adaptation. Over the next thousand years, humans will have to delve inside the genes and logical structures that make up the mind, because the cosmos – as Darwin taught us – is subject to the law of evolution; those who fail to adapt will perish. So either humans will trans- form themselves, or else they’ll fall to the rank of slaves. The anti- utopian tone of the novel is increased by the deliberate linking of evolution with money and power. In short, the future belongs to the rich, who will be able to buy themselves wisdom, and to the intelligent, who will know how to climb up the Evolutionary Curve. The story is set at the end of the third millennium, but Dukaj supplements it with some developments of contemporary themes, including the issue of globalisation, i.e. events we are all constantly surrounded by. The author calls its sequel ‘cosmologisation’ – the gradual, systematic acquisition of the universe by higher beings, i.e. those who are richer and more powerful. In Dukaj’s world only the powerful are not afraid of illness, old age, injury or assassination, and it is only the powerful who are not bound by any spatial limitations. The fabulous new world lies spread at their feet. The rest play ball on the beach. They have the sand and the sunset for free – for now. So here we are, it is the twenty-ninth century and everything in our galaxy has changed – and stayed the same. Przemysław Czapliński From reviews Holy shit, this book is epic! Luke Maciak, terminally-incoherent.com
Official site: http://www.dukaj.pl
Agent / Rights Director: Anna Rucińska, anna.rucinska@nurnberg.pl
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FICTION
Jacek Dukaj
Other Songs Inne pieśni Other Songs takes place in a parallel world in which a change occurred in the ideas organizing the order of the world and things: politics, technology, economics, all are arranged in accordance with the thought of ancient Greece and in total detachment from the historical realities known to us. Ancient Greece did not fall, but flourishes in accordance with the laws of physics in the understanding of the philosophers of that time. The entire world has been filtered through ancient thought; the universe is changed, including the Moon, which is a settled globe in the novel. Date of publication: 2003 Pages: 192 Category: science fiction Rights sold to: Colibri, Bulgaria Typotex, Hungary AST, Russia English synopsis available. English sample available.
The universe is built from five arche (elements); people act on one another through morphē, shaping one another, and come to resemble one another if they remain together long enough. The Form will prevail of the one who wields its greater power, which is reflected in the social hierarchy. Feudal dependency places at the height of power kratistos, the most powerful lords of the human morphē, capable of imposing their Form on the environment of both animate nature and inanimate things. Their Form is so strong that it can force submission and performance of their will, so they can never meet face to face, because that would threaten a clash between too powerful forces. They stand above kings and the aristocracy on territories over which spreads their anthos – the corona of the influence of their Form. We encounter Hieronim Berbelek as a man of modest height on whom it is easy to impose Form in society and in the business interests he dabbles in. Hardly anyone recalls that in the past he was one of the greatest – literally and figuratively – strategos of all time. During his glory years, he could even spit in the face of the powerful kratistos, nicknamed Warlock, who forced him through his Form to withdraw from a military career. But he cannot fool his true nature. When he is reunited with his children, and after he meets the mysterious Szulima Amitace, Berbelek abandons the surrogate goal of making money, embarking on a journey to the place of ultimate perversion of Form, in the heart of Africa, where terrifying beauty and monstrous miracles are born.
Official site: http://www.dukaj.pl
Agent / Rights Director: Anna Rucińska, anna.rucinska@nurnberg.pl
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FICTION
Jacek Dukaj
The Old Axolotl Starość aksolotla The Old Axolotl is an exhilarating post-apocalyptic tale about a world in which a cosmic catastrophe has sterilized the Earth of all living things. Only a small number of humans have managed to copy digitalized versions of their minds onto hardware in the nick of time. Deprived of physical bodies, they continue to exist by up- loading themselves onto gigantic industrial robots, sophisticated medical machines, mechs designed for hard labour, military drones, star troopers, and sexbots based on Japanese manga.
Date of publication: 2015 Pages: 192 Category: science fiction Rights sold to: Allegro (ebook in English) English synopsis available. English sample available.
Drowning in nostalgia for the lost world, the survivors create civilization after civilization, life after life, humanity after humanity. They form alliances and fight wars. They develop their own politics, ideologies, and crazy hardware religions. And they face dilemmas no one has ever confronted before. What makes us human? Is it possible to copy a soul? Who really lives, fights and dies in those metal bodies? Who plays out the melancholy drama of physiology and the flesh? The Old Axolotl depicts the reversal of old oppositions between life and death, progress and stagnation, the organic and the mechanical, exploring the mystery of the human soul and the eternal solitude of the human individual, whether trapped in a body or the reinforced steel of a robot. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but the screech of metal. From reviews If you asked me to list the most interesting science fiction writers of the last decade or two, I would give you five names without hesitation: Vernor Vinge, Charles Stross, Cory Doctorow, Neal Stephenson, and Jacek Dukaj. Not necessarily in that order. The five have a lot in common. They all write about the human condition on the cusp of singularity, they are all extremely prolific, and they all excel at packing their books with high-brow ideas, science, and philosophy. The first four are fairly well known all around the world. The last is not as recognizable, which is a shame. Luke Maciak, terminally-incoherent.com
Official site: http://www.dukaj.pl
Agent / Rights Director: Anna Rucińska, anna.rucinska@nurnberg.pl 16
Bojan Ekselenski (Slovenia) Bojan Ekselenski, born 1964, is one of the most renowned Slovenian speculative fiction authors. He started writing very early on. In the 90s he started compiling the fantasy world of Knights & Wizards. His idea eventually resulted in a long fantasy epic novel. His book research included studying mythologies, religions, a more detailed study of the ancient and early medieval history of Europe, the theory of particles, etc. In 2006 he created a website at which he displayed glimpses of his upcoming first book. He decided for the saga to have four parts. Furthermore, he initiated a novelty in Slovenia – a fantasy world with on-line support. In 2007 his debut Knights & Wizards: Indigo children was published. While writing his second book, he placed the website on a more modern platform and in early 2008 he came up with the idea of a fanzine for the Knights & Wizards saga. He named it ‘Jashubeg en Jered’ meaning ‘News from Otherworld’, the title taken from the imaginary fairy tale language of his book. The fanzine is now a solitary Photo by Andrej Ivanuša promoter and messenger of Slovenian authors of speculative fiction. He compiled a few stories and published his second book Knights & Wizards: Indigo New World in 2011. He has since published six more printed books and numerous e-books. He regularly publishes short stories in Slovenian magazines (Joker, Življenje in tehnika, Vsesledje, Vpogledi, etc.). One of his stories appeared in Eridan fanzin, Croatia. Together with Andrej Ivanuša, Ruža Barić, and Amedeja M. Ličen he established Zvezdni prah (Stardust) Author’s Society of Speculative Arts in 2011. He is the chair and active member of the Literary Society of Celje and is an active promoter of speculative arts. OUTSTANDING AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS 2012 Drejček Award for the short story Time Credit (Časovni kredit)
Official site: http://www.samozalozba.eu http://vitezicarovniki.com http://zvezdni-prah.si
Contact: Bojan Ekselenski bojan.ekselenski@samozalozba.eu
BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR Novels 2016 Padec svetih, Povesti iz sage Vitezi in Čarovniki / Fall of the Saints, Tales from Knights & Wizards 2016 Poezija magičnega in mističnega: Tako je Bog govoril / Poetry of the Magic and Mystical: So that God Spoke 2016 Vzpon Elejle, Povesti iz sage Vitezi in Čarovniki / Rise of Eleila, Tales from Knights & Wizards 2016 Vitezi in Čarovniki: Vzpon indigo otrok / Knights & Wizards: The Rise of Indigo Children 2015 Somrak Drugotnosti: Povesti iz sage Vitezi in Čarovniki / The Twilight of Otherworld: The Stories of Knights & Wizards saga, e-book 2015 Atlantida: Imperij sončnega boga / Atlantis: The Empire of the God of Sun 2013 Vitezi in Čarovniki: Duhovi Aldeverga / Knights & Wizards: The Spirits of Aldeverg, e-book 2013 Vitezi in Čarovniki: Zadnji boj Zeolije / Knights & Wizards: The Last Battle of Zeolia, e-book 2012 Vitezi in Čarovniki: Votlina skrivnosti / Knights & Wizards: The Cave of Secrets 2011 Vitezi in Čarovniki: Indigo novi svet / Knights & Wizards: The Indigo New World 2007 Vitezi in Čarovniki: Indigo otroci / Knights & Wizards: The Indigo Children Short story collection 2015 Povesti od tod in tam / The stories from There to That, e-book 17
FICTION
Bojan Ekselenski
Eleila’s Rise Vzpon Elejle
Date of publication: 2016 Pages: 120 Category: speculative fiction
The Fall of the Saints is the central part of an intriguing Trilogy of the Space Empire; however Eleila’s Rise is the first of the stories. It takes place 200 years before The Fall of the Saints and takes us to the times of the birth of the Space Empire and Eleila’s appearance. It all begins with the position of Sonoroda, the easternmost area of the World Empire. The big, yet rarely populated archipelago carries an immensely important responsibility. Every 20 years it sends a councillorship to Taraf in order to hold back the forces of Megshelem outside Afterlife’s door. Darej Halal, the new priest of Taraf, does not consider it a danger that should be detained in the temple underneath the earth, but instead sees it as an opportunity for asserting his birth Sonoroda. He is surprised by what awaits him … And so will be the readers.
English synopsis available. English sample available.
Bojan Ekselenski
The Fall of the Saints Padec svetih The Fall of the Saints is the central part of the Trilogy of the Space Empire. It tells the tragic story of the notorious Refuge. During the siege of the capital of the World Empire, a last court overthrow occurs. The young half-elf heir Timeus Simidal is forced to flee. Accompanied by the slightly humorous uncle Georj, an ork pimp, a prince of thieves, smugglers, and deserters of some sort, by a female ork slave, and by the last of the members of the fanatic guardians’ caste, he takes on a hazardous journey sown with tragic events.
Date of publication: 2016 Pages: 144 Category: speculative fiction English synopsis available. English sample available.
Official site: http://www.samozalozba.eu http://vitezicarovniki.com http://zvezdni-prah.si Contact: Bojan Ekselenski bojan.ekselenski@samozalozba.eu 18
FICTION
Bojan Ekselenski
Knights and Wizards: The Cave of Secrets Vitezi in čarovniki: Votlina skrivnosti British celebrity archaeologists, Dr Neil Dickson and Dr Mary Smith, find an unusual, isolated cave by the notorious archaeological site Qumran next to the Dead Sea. It soon appears that the cave is not isolated without a reason. The scientific curiosity, the quest for academic fame, and the accompanying status awaken a curse that should never have seen the light of the world in the 21th Century. The artefacts found are proved to have come from another world, a completely foreign universe. Unusual things begin to take place. The secret order of MAGNA ORDO SANCTUM SPIRITUS working under the patronage of the Catholic Church gets involved.
Date of publication: 2013 Pages: 286 Category: speculative fiction English synopsis available. English sample available.
Mary’s order from Magdala appears as well, and various technological agencies, terrorist, and counter-terrorist groups add to the situation. The celebrity archaeologists become refugees hunted by everyone wanting to obtain the key to the almighty forces. Mary’s order from Mandala wants to carry out a terrible ritual of embodying the Eleila chaos. The blood sacrifice of the innocent, the one born out of a sinful relation, fails due to Mary’s procedure and the birth of hell on earth unravels … Quite literally. The stage for Eleila and the infernal choir of damejahs and kerkeshes is set!
Bojan Ekselenski
The Lubliana Gymnasium of Magic Magijska gimnazija Lubliana Imagine a world in which the forces written about in various spiritual and mystical books are scientific truths. What kind of a world can be driven by fluids? What is the world where religion is the basic connecting force and magic is the cornerstone of science like?
Date of publication: Coming soon Pages: 192 Category: speculative fiction English synopsis available. English sample available.
Official site: http://www.samozalozba.eu http://vitezicarovniki.com http://zvezdni-prah.si Contact: Bojan Ekselenski bojan.ekselenski@samozalozba.eu
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Jerzy Franczak (Poland) Jerzy Franczak, born in 1978, is a prose-writer, essayist, literary scholar, critic, and academic teacher. He is the author of novels, shortstory collections, essays, and two books on contemporary literature. He has worked, among other positions, as a television and radio journalist. He was the editor-in-chief of the literary and arts Nowy Wiek magazine. For several years he hosted the programme on new publications, Czytelnia, for TVP Kultura. He has also published his own collections of short stories Three Storys (2001), Squib (2004), and Algae, Calques, and Cogs (2004). He is also the author of a collection of essays, Gravitations (2007), and the dissertations on contemporary literature: Something about Unreality (2002), The Search for Reality: The Polish World View and Modernist Prose (2007). His works also include several novels: The Fitting Room (2008), The Inhuman Comedy (2009), Da capo (2010), NN Photo by Piotr Kaliński (2012), and Sainte Fabeau (2017). His writings have been translated into Italian, French, German, English, Slovenian, Slovakian, and other languages. He works with Twórczość, HA!art, and Tygodnik Powszechny. Jerzy Franczak teaches literature, creative writing and cultural studies at the Faculty of Polish Studies and the Faculty of Cultural Studies of Jagiellonian University. OUTSTANDING AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS 1998 Stanisław Grochowiak Prize 2000 Stanisław Czycz Prize 2000 Premio Tivoli Prize (Italy) 2003 Polityka magazine Award 2003–2004 Foundation for Polish Science research grant 2008 Krakow’s Book of the Month 2008 Prime Minister’s Prize for PhD thesis 2011–2014 Ministry of Education research grant BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR Novels 2017 Sainte-Fabeau 2012 NN 2010 Da capo 2009 Nieludzka komedia / The Inhuman Comedy 2008 Przymierzalnia / Fitting Room 2004 Szmermele / Squib 2001 Trzy historye / Three Storys Essays 2007 Grawitacje / Gravitations Academic monographs 2009 Poszukiwanie realności: Światopogląd polskiej prozy modernistycznej / The Search for Reality: The Polish World View and Modernist Prose 2002 Rzecz o nierzeczywistości / Something about Unreality Official site: http://franczak.wydawnictwoliterackie.pl Contact: Jerzy Franczak jurek.franczak@gmail.com
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FICTION
Jerzy Franczak
The Fitting Room Przymierzalnia
Date of publication: 2008 Pages: 232 Category: contemporary fiction Rights sold to: Protimluv, Czech Republic
The main problem for Jurek in The Fitting Room is his lack of a defined identity or fixed life plan, because being a writer is a bizarre profession: it condemns him to endless revision of his life with the help of literary means, telling the story of it, which always means shifting from the realm of reality into the worlds of fiction, where you don’t have to take responsibility for anything, and at any moment people and things can be subjected to correction, revisions that results in caricature, or total annihilation. Jurek lives among male and female friends who, like him, are struggling with the unreality of the worlds around them and with the artificiality of the roles they are playing. We could say that they are all stuck in the ‘fitting room’ of the title. There they try on ready-made personality masks, which they keep swapping in a futile search for one that ‘fits’ their faces. All at once this is an existential problem – and an excellent literary game, because the masks are at the same time sets of languages and quotations that are actively used within the milieu of writers and lovers of literature.
Jerzy Franczak
The Inhuman Comedy Nieludzka komedia
Date of publication: 2009 Pages: 192 Category: contemporary fiction Rights sold to: KUD Police Dubove, Slovenia English synopsis available. English sample available.
Contact: Jerzy Franczak jurek.franczak@gmail.com
Written with spleen, full of black humour, this is an intellectually refined tale of the horrors of daily life and modern crime. The Inhuman Comedy is on the surface light and breezy, though somewhat unpleasant. It is being told by one Emil Król, a writer manqué, a frustrated teacher, and an unlucky lover. His stories of his family, his travels and his work are filled with venomous humour and bitter irony. By the reader’s smile vanishes from his mouth when this kind sceptic commits a bestial murder, killing his lover, the mother-to-be of his child, and then chops up her body … Locked in prison, he describes his life and eavesdrops on the media furore gathering around his crime. Without sacrificing a touch of its wit, Franczak’s novel ultimately reveals its Dantesque dimensions and changes into a meditation on contemporary evil, both intangible and stripped of its essence. [Frankfurt Book Fair 2010] From reviews The Inhuman Comedy is one of the finest examples of ‘young writers’ I’ve come across lately. Perfection of craft and knowledge of literature are visible on every page. Franczak’s novel is a sophisticated, erudite game – the very title contains clear allusions to Dante’s Divine Comedy and Balzac’s Human Comedy (the former work serves the author in discussing the nature of contemporary evil, and he skilfully reflects the latter in the satirical way he portrays the misery of our daily activities) — but this is just the beginning. Patrycja Pustkowiak, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna 21
Jerzy Franczak
Da capo Da capo
Date of publication: 2010 Pages: 192 Category: contemporary fiction Rights sold to: KUD Police Dubove, Slovenia English synopsis available. English sample available.
Is Da Capo a rollicking adventure in the spirit of Roman Polanski’s Frantic, replete with a young femme fatale and a man with nothing left to lose? Is it an unflinching examination of dysfunctional family relationships (both with one’s parents and with one’s wife/child) and a valiant attempt to salvage something from them? An inside look at the seedy underbelly of Krakow’s bars and night life? A lesson in how to get fired from your corporate office job? Well, it’s all of these things, obviously, as well as a sequel to Franczak’s previous Wydawnictwo Literackie publisher’s success, The Inhuman Comedy – the new novel’s protagonist is the brother of the previous one’s. Franczak’s great achievement here is to have not sat content with writing a gripping novel that young people will identify with. He has upped the stakes by also making this a novel that takes emotional risks, and demonstrates a universal comprehension of human interaction way beyond his years. [Frankfurt Book Fair 2010] The hero of Da capo is first a timid child dominated by the people that surround him, next a sex maniac condemned to compulsive acts of masturbation, and finally a lifelong loser who, after a series of catastrophes at work and in his marriage, goes back home to his parents’ place, where he is unexpectedly embraced by his father, who had terrorized him in his youth, even managing, in the end, to come to love that once-hated man. Da capo is thus a work that is somehow characteristic of young, contemporary Polish literature. It shows how its protagonists have trouble defining their own identity, trouble with their entrance into the social forum, and ultimately trouble evaluating themselves; the traumas connected with this evaluation often have their origins in a defective family and are passed down from father to son. [New Books From Poland 2010]
Official site: http://franczak.wydawnictwoliterackie.pl Contact: Jerzy Franczak jurek.franczak@gmail.com 22
FICTION
Jerzy Franczak
NN NN
Date of publication: 2012 Pages: 192 Category: contemporary fiction Rights sold to: KUD Police Dubove, Slovenia English synopsis available. English sample available.
The acronym of the title pertains as much to the plot (a nameless victim of a road accident appears in the exposition) as to the key words – Nobody and Nothing – with which the author marks the novel’s two parts. The beginning seems ordinary enough – in Kraków, in the middle of a rainy night, three random pedestrians stop by a man lying on the road, obviously hit by a car. Each of the characters has a monologue concerning both the accident at hand and the speaker’s own situation. As such, the reader is given a baton race of storytellers – and it soon turns out that there are more than three. The latecomers are not tied to the initial incident, but they have various relationships with the protagonists who have spoken. The first to speak is Artur, a medical equipment salesman. He hates his work, and to some degree, himself as well. The same goes for Mariola, a simple woman tormented by her alcoholic husband, who, to keep the pain from driving her entirely mad (the loss of her child), keeps a blog filled with fantasies of a better life. Just when she’s about to slip away from a police patrol, a boy named Heads appears – an eternal student, something of a left-wing anarchist, a bit of a rebel without a cause. These protagonists differ in terms of their social status and their cultural competencies, the author has given them different states of awareness, he has tied them to different communities. What they have in common, however, is a crucial thing – alienation, a sense of not understanding, the experience of inauthenticity. In moments of sincerity the protagonists of NN understand that their lives are less absurd than entirely conventionalized, subject to unbearable routine. They correctly suspect that someone or something has forced them to play their roles in society, to participate in the tedious, barren play called life. It is also significant that, in describing their place in the world, the protagonists speak only to themselves, with hope of neither comprehension nor communication. [New Books From Poland 2012] From reviews Jerzy Franczak is without a doubt one of the most interesting figures among today’s young Polish writers. Leszek Bugajski, Newsweek
Official site: http://franczak.wydawnictwoliterackie.pl Contact: Jerzy Franczak jurek.franczak@gmail.com
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Goran Janković (Bosnia and Herzegovina / Slovenia) Goran Janković, born 1959 in Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, studied philosophy and literature at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University in Sarajevo, graduating in 1983. He lived in Zenica until the start of the war in Bosnia in 1992, publishing essays and short stories in Sarajevo and Belgrade magazines, founding a family and working at various jobs (police inspector for violent and sexual offences, bookseller, house painter, copy editor in a print shop ...). Then he finds refuge in Ljubljana in 1992, where he joins the cultural and artistic association KUD France Photo by Damijan Kocijančič Prešeren, starting and directing its publishing activity. On the basis of his work, he was granted extraordinary citizenship of the Republic of Slovenia. He has written and published four books of literature and edited the anthology Short stories of Ex-Yugoslavia 1990–2000. He has edited around a hundred books of literature. He publishes occasional essays, short stories, poems, and haikus, as well as translations from Slovenian in regional magazines. Because of his views (the wars in Yugoslavia were wars of thieves and conmen; there are only two nations: one of humans, one of non-humans; our language is one, and called Serbo-Croatian ...) he does not fit into the ruling cannons, and lives and works on the margin. BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR Novels 2013 On the Barren Hill above the Road / Događaj na brdu iznad puta 1993 A Word or Two about Petronius / Riječ-dvije o Petroniju Short story collections 1995 Of Simple Things / O prostim stvarima (bilingual: Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian) Poetry collections 1997 As Clouds Pass By / Dok oblaci promiču (four languages: SerboCroatian, English, Italian, and Slovenian)
Contact: Goran Janković rudolf@kud-fp.si 24
FICTION
Goran Janković
On the Barren Hill above the Road Događaj na brdu iznad puta The title, structure, and end of the novel directly reference the short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce. The aim was to expand the space opened by Bierce and leave an open ending. Besides the themes of friendship, love, war, the relationship between the victim and the executioner, the main theme was the desire for selfrealization as a normal human being.
Date of publication: 2013 Pages: 192 Category: contemporary fiction English synopsis available. English sample available.
Filip (main character, tailor), Denis (criminal), Ivan (junkie), and Kenan (poet) are childhood friends. Their playful adolescent flirting with crime and drugs becomes their main preoccupation in life. Something constantly pulls Filip to break away from it. He kicks the heroin habit when he falls in love with Klara, and abandons crime when they have a child, Sabina. But then war comes. When he sees the organized departure of Jews on TV, he realizes that he must also leave. His name would betray his ethnicity, so he has to obtain forged documents. He tries to get them through his friend Mirza (painter, junkie, criminal). Mirza screws up at first, then fakes for him his own ID card. The plan fails at a check point. Bosnia is a small country, and it turns out that Mirza owes the check point commander two kilos of powder. An executioner leads Filip away, on a trail up the hill where executions take place. Filip manages to free himself in the last moment, and escapes. He finds his wife and child and they finally manage to get away from the war. They are helped by Denis, who brings them to Ljubljana, where he now lives. Filip recovers quickly, Klara more slowly. He gets into crime again, and gets hooked on heroin. Klara and Sabina leave him. Filip sinks deeper and deeper until he meets Svetlana, a girl from Ukraine brought in by Denis as a prostitute, on false pretences. Washing the blood from her raped and battered body, he decides to finally break away from that kind of life. He re-joins his wife and child. He works at menial jobs until he cleanses himself and regains strength, and then obtains a sewing machine and takes up tailoring again, for the first time after school. He gains a reputation as a good tailor that does not charge too much. Ivan and Kenan arrive in Ljubljana, looking for a cure for Kenan’s illness. There is no cure, and Ivan shortens Kenan’s agony with a golden shot. When they notify Denis (with whom Mirza is staying), he insists they go to a bar and drink to Kenan’s memory. There they meet ‘the guys from the south’ who are in business with Denis. These are the guys from the check point. Recognition follows, and a shoot-out. Everyone dies, except Denis and Filip, who is wounded. Denis takes him home, and Klara and Sabina nurse him. Filip falls asleep and finds himself at the end of the trail, where executions take place. The executioner raises the gun and fires into his forehead. From reviews
Contact: Goran Janković rudolf@kud-fp.si
What a joyful surprize and cleansing I experienced even as I dived into the first pages of Janković’s manuscript! The freshness, power, speed, and mastery of language build up with further reading, shaping a great disegno. Tomaž Šalamun
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Alenka Jensterle-Doležal (Slovenia / Czech Republic) Alenka Jensterle-Doležal, born 1959, is a poet, prose writer, essayist, and literary researcher. She is a lecturer of Slovenian and Slavic literatures at the Department of South Slavic and Balkan Studies at Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. She has worked as a Slovenian language teacher at universities in Prague, Krakow, New York, and Nottingham, and as a research fellow at the Slavic Institute in Prague. Alenka Jensterle-Doležal is the author of three scientific monographs: Myth about Antigone in the Western and Southern Slavic drama of the 1950s (2004), In the Circle of Myths: About Woman and Death in Slovenian literature (2008), Author, Text, Context, Communication: Chapters from the Slovenian “Moderna” (2014); and scientific papers published in collective monographs, miscellanies, and specialised journals in the Czech Republic, Slovenia, and other countries. She edited two miscellanies as well as two collective monographs. She is the author of poetry collections: Judith’s Bridge (1990), Landscapes of the Beginning (1994), Mirages (1996), Notes for S.G., (2006), Poems in the Snow (2012), and novels Dark City (1993) and The Meaning of the House (2015). Alenka Jensterle-Doležal’s texts were translated and published in Czech, Slovak, Croatian, English, Polish, and Hungarian language. Books by the author Novels 2015 Pomen hiše / The Meaning of the House 1993 Temno mesto / Dark City Poetry collections 2012 Pesmi v snegu / Poems in the Snow 2006 Zapiski za S. G / Notes for S. G. 1996 Přeludy / Mirages (in Czech) 1994 Pokrajine začetka / Landscapes of the Beginning 1990 Juditin most / Judith’s Bridge Scientific monographs 2014 Avtor, tekst, kontekst, komunikacija: Poglavja iz slovenske moderne / Author, Text, Context, Communication: Chapters from the Slovenian “Moderna” 2008 V krogu mitov: O ženski in smrti v slovenski književnosti / In the Circle of Myths: About Women and Death in Slovenian literature 2004 Mit o Antigoni v zahodno- in južnoslovanskih dramatikah sredi 20. stoletja / Myth about Antigone in the Western and Southern Slavic drama of the 1950s
Contact: Alenka Jensterle-Doležal dolezalova.l@volny.cz 26
FICTION
Alenka Jensterle Doležal
The Meaning of the House Pomen hiše Perhaps at first sight the subtitle of the novel by the poet, writer, translator, journalist, and publicist Alenka Jensterle-Doležal The Meaning of the House: A Novel on Growing Up might seem misleading. More than a classical novelesque structure, the reader is facing fragmented excerpts of introspective short fiction, with cyclically repetitive self-questioning, confessional aphorisms, pieces of Slovene and female every day, its universality proving that it does not actually matter whether this every day contains autobiographical elements or not. Anyhow, the reader is facing intimate records that sometimes give the impression of chasing their own tail in a never ending circle, never bringing about any kind of epiphany or alleviation, some irrevocable, redemptive, and final cognition. Date of publication: 2015 Pages: 216 Category: contemporary fiction English synopsis available. English sample available.
Yet still; isn’t this exactly what defines growing up as a process that is not only limited to a somewhat short period determined by biological landmarks, but as a process of hard labour that we cannot evade until the last breath? The generation that the author and I belong to was destined from the cradle on that we will have to face an above-average number of existential dilemmas that sometimes led us to the apparent contradictory or at least ambivalent modi of sentiment and acting. There is the village, the birth place that suffocates and restricts, but which is at the same time the never achieved locus of longing and search for one’s own identity. There is the mother, cold and distant, and yet the first with whom we incessantly want to establish that most confidential, primal contact; it is self-evident that the ambivalence of this relation is in one way or another reflected in the endeavour of building different relationships with our children. There is sexuality as something that we may be afraid of and that we may feel reluctant about, yet which is a form of resistance at the same time; there are the abortions, unfaithfulness, and platonic love which may be the ideal but not the solution. Alenka Jenstrle-Doležal’s writing includes all that to which we return again and again in an attempt to give meaning to ourselves, only differently every time; how could it be done better than by writing? Or in the words of the author herself: “Perhaps we can exceed our contingency by the very act of telling our story to someone?” Maja Novak
Contact: Alenka Jensterle-Doležal dolezalova.l@volny.cz 27
Ignacy Karpowicz (Poland) Ignacy Karpowicz, born 1976, is one of Poland’s most interesting contemporary writers. He has written several novels (Offbeat, Miracle, Gestures, Balladynas and Romances, Fish Bones, Sonya), he won the Polityka Passport in 2010 for his novel Balladynas and Romances, and was earlier nominated for the same award for Offbeat (2006). He has received three nominations for the prestigious NIKE Literary Award for Gestures (2009), Balladynas and Romances (2011), and Fish Bones (2014). He has been a columnist for Charaktery, Polityka, and Dziennik Opinii magazines, as well as a reviewer for Gazeta Wyborcza. OUTSTANDING AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS Nomination for the Polityka Passport for Offbeat Polityka Passport for Balladynas and Romances Nominated for the NIKE Award for Gestures Nominated for the NIKE Award for Balladynas and Romances Nominated for the NIKE Award for Fish Bones Photo by Wojciech Wojtkielewicz Winner of Readers’ Choice NIKE 2014 Awards for Fish Bones Shortlisted for the NIKE Award for Sonya BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR 2014 Sońka / Sonya 2013 ości / Fish Bones 2010 Balladyny i romanse / Balladynas and Romances 2008 Gesty / Gestures 2007 Nowy Kwiat Cesarza (i pszczoły) / The Emperor’s (and the Bee’s) New Flower 2007 Cud / The Miracle 2006 Niehalo / Offbeat
Agent / Rights Director: Joanna Dąbrowska j.dabrowska@wydawnictwoliterackie.pl 28
FICTION
Ignacy Karpowicz
Fish Bones ości Fish Bones is a modern urban novel, which depicts non-typical relations among people, especially unconventional families: a renowned sociologist Ninel begins an affair with Norbert, who happens to be Max’ lover. Max, a Vietnamese, performs as Warsaw’s favourite drag queen, but from Monday to Friday he leads a regular married life with a Catholic Polish woman Maria, who is acutely aware of her husband’s secret life. Psychically labile Maya is not able to make up her mind between her husband Simon and her lover Frank, who is Ninel’s son. In either case, deceptions and extramarital affairs do not result in the destruction of marriage, but – on the contrary – lead into expansion of the protagonists’ contacts with the outside world. Date of publication: 2013 Pages: 192 Category: contemporary fiction Rights sold to: Slovenia, KUD Police Dubove English synopsis available. English sample available.
From reviews Karpowicz’s novel is a complex and enormously intelligent weave. It tells of two families in which betrayal and extra-marital affairs lead less to destruction than to the expansion of relationships. What is decisive here are feelings stronger than lust and attitudes weaker than sincerity. It is precisely this suggestion – that a lasting bond means not always calling a spade a spade, a necessary dose of hypocrisy, and a discrepancy between behaviour and opinions – makes Karpowicz’s Fish Bones one of the most intriguing novels about families that has been written in recent years. Przemysław Czapliński However it might sound, this book is extraordinarily juicy. And so hot that it burns. Michał Nogaś If you are travelling by bus or train and see someone across from you reading Fish Bones, you can be more than sure that he’ll be wearing a wonderful, sincere, and beautiful smile! Just like the one I’ve got today! A home with Fish Bones is a happy home! Maciej Stuhr Beneath its seemingly carefree approach to literature we can clearly see the various layers of the book, its bones; Karpowicz proves not only his great awareness as a writer, but also his high ranking among Poland’s best contemporary storytellers. Marek Styczyński, Kultura.onet.pl An aging literary critic, a depressed female biologist, a gay man with a proclivity for pedantry, and a few other people whose bases in reality are not so difficult to guess meet in these pages in unexpected circumstances. This is a story full of the dazzling irony known to readers of Balladynas and Romances, as well as the psychological depth of the earlier Gestures. Małgorzata I. Niemczyńska, Gazeta Wyborcza
Agent / Rights Director: Joanna Dąbrowska j.dabrowska@wydawnictwoliterackie.pl
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Vesna Lemaić (Slovenia) Vesna Lemaić, born 1981, holds a degree in comparative literature. Besides organizing collective trash writing workshops, she is active in the Group for integration of migrant women and is involved in the struggle against capitalism. Vesna Lemaić made her debut in 2008 with Popular Stories. This book of short stories has earned her three notable awards. One of these short stories was included in Best European Fiction anthology (Dalkey Archive Press, 2014). In 2010, she published her first novel The Dumping Ground and continued with her 2014 novel A Chicken and Birds. Vesna Lemaić believes in solidarity, grassroots movements, fighting the power relations, and is always out hunting for new ideals. OUTSTANDING AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS 2010 Fabula Award for best book of short stories, the award of Radio Slovenia 2009 Slovenian Book Fair Award Photo by Happy Acne 2008 Zlata ptica Award for Literature BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR Novels 2014 A Chicken and Birds / Kokoška in ptiči 2010 The Dumping Ground / Odlagališče Short story collections 2008 Popular Stories / Popularne zgodbe
Contact: Vesna Lemaić lemaic.vesna@gmail.com
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FICTION
Vesna Lemaić
Popular Stories Popularne zgodbe The short stories are flirting with elements of a variety of popular genres, fermenting them thoroughly with contemporary social issues. There are Dolly Parton, an unemployed person, drugged tourists, a war veteran in love, and other protagonists, who – with straightforwardness of uttering and psychological experiencing – shed light on diverse living positions. Colourful language, which is not ashamed of slang, and humorous twists are keeping us back from speeding towards the end of the story as quickly as narrative suspense is driving us.
Date of publication: 2008 Pages: 149 Category: contemporary fiction Rights sold to: Centar za kreativno pisanje, Croatia English synopsis available. English sample available.
Vesna Lemaić
The Dumping Ground Odlagališče
Date of publication: 2010 Pages: 206 Category: contemporary fiction English synopsis available. English sample available.
The Dumping Ground is a novel with elements of action thriller and science fiction genres. The inspiration for the book comes from real electronic dumping grounds and the society, in which the manufacture of products and waste storage are reserved for the people living on the margins, while consumption and prosperity are the privileges of people with political and economic power. Social outcasts, who represent a threat to the system, are condemned to forced labour. One of them is Grace, a thrasher who refuses exploitation and the capitalist social order. She stands up to them with fanaticism, her body slowly becoming the dumping ground of ideas and toxic substances. Trixie is a corporate researcher who even considers her own orgasms as the property of her mysterious employer, the omnipresent Base. And then there is Britt, a psychodogmatics dealer and master of survival. The women cross paths in the Delta Zero zone, each trying to change their destiny in their own way.
Contact: Vesna Lemaić lemaic.vesna@gmail.com
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FICTION
Vesna Lemaić
A Chicken and Birds Kokoška in ptiči
Date of publication: 2014 Pages: 195 Category: contemporary fiction English synopsis available. English sample available.
The novel A Chicken and Birds is a book about resistance, search for power, and self-organising in the time of crisis. In the foreground, there are events happening between the years 2011–2012, when protesters – following the Occupy movement – occupied the platform in front of Ljubljana stock exchange building, and camped there for 6 months in the camp named Fight For. A protagonist who is looking for a community, in which she could express her unrest and join the wider revolt against capitalism, also nestles there. She is completely overtaken by political actions and social fermentation. But the more that she pushes away the personal, the intimate, the stronger they appear, the louder they babble, reminding her of their existence. There is also her girlfriend, with whom she spends less and less time, and her grandmother, who was the activist of the illegal Yugoslav revolutionary communist youth during the Second World War waiting for her at home. The author is speaking – under the surface of events – about hidden sprockets of interpersonal relationships and love, uncertainty and precariousness, the search for one’s own place in society, and giving meaning to resistance. Meanwhile, the novel is written in an experiential and humorous way, and with a fair share of self-irony.
Contact: Vesna Lemaić lemaic.vesna@gmail.com
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Jan Němec (Czech Republic) Jan Němec, born 1981, graduated in Sociology from Masaryk University in Brno. He works as an editor at Host publishing house and Host literary monthly. For two years, Jan Němec was a chairman of Czech Writers Association (till the end of 2016). OUTSTANDING AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS 2014 Czech Book Award 2014 European Union Prize for Literature 2014 Shortlisted for Josef Škvorecký Prize and Magnesia Litera in the prose category BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR Novels 2013 Dějiny světla / A History of Light 2009 Hra pro čtyři ruce / A Play for Four Hands Photo by Anna Nádvorníková
Poetry 2007 První život / The First Life
Agent / Rights Director: Dana Blatná blatna@dbagency.cz 33
FICTION
Jan Němec
A History of Light Dějiny světla
Date of publication: 2013 Pages: 488 Category: contemporary fiction Rights sold to: Colibri, Bulgaria Clio, Serbia Antolog, Macedonia Książkowe Klimaty, Poland Ljevak, Croatia Noran Libro, Hungary Safara Editore, Italy KUD Police Dubove, Slovenia Fan Noli, Albania Lasitava, Latvia Jantar Publishing, United Kingdom Errata naturae editors, Spain English synopsis available. English sample available.
Have you ever wondered what a story written by a beam of light would be like? First, the story would be ordinary but the course of events extraordinary; second, its hero would be a photographer, a guardian of light; third, naturally it would be full of shadow. So who was František Drtikol? A dandy from a small mining town, a world-famous photographer whose business went bankrupt, a master of the nude who never had much luck with women, a mystic and a Buddhist who believed in communism; a man whose many contradictions showed outwardly and were synthesized inwardly. The conception of Jan Němec’s extensive novel is very unusual for contemporary Czech prose – fresco-like, it is an artistic and spiritual Bildungsroman that covers over half a century, bringing to life the silver mines of Přibram, Jugendstil Munich and First Republic Bohemianism, with naked models wandering along the lines and light merging unobserved with knowledge … From reviews I’m certain that Jan Němec’s novel A History of Light is unrivalled in current Czech literature. And I’d even argue that it’s a beacon which Czech literature has been lacking for a long time. Jiří Kratochvil, writer, ČT art The whole novel therefore represents a remarkable and substantial experiment, offering an account about Drtikol, the history of photography as a new art form, the cultural climate of the incredibly interesting and turbulent period around the end of the AustroHungarian Empire, the First World War and the 1920s, but also about the narrative possibilities of contemporary novels. And as I’ve already mentioned Illies’s novel 1913: The Year Before the Storm, it’s worth adding that Jan Němec has written a more than worthy Czech counterpart. Not only because of his ability to incorporate all the topics mentioned above into one novel in a sophisticated yet playful manner, but also because of an almost mysterious feature – the novel never loses its pace and is very hard to put down even after 400 pages. Petr A. Bílek, Respekt I read this novel as a manifestation of a genre which is very fertile in the world but which is more or less absent in Czech literature, a biographical novel, which combines presenting the facts and myths about the life of a personality with the attempt to portray the hero’s life as a series of extraordinary and remarkable events, aiming at higher quality. Pavel Janoušek, Host
Agent / Rights Director: Dana Blatná blatna@dbagency.cz 34
Ben Okri (Nigeria / United Kingdom) Ben Okri, born 1959, Nigerian novelist, short-story writer, and poet who used magic realism to convey the social and political chaos in the country of his birth. Okri attended Urhobo College in Warri, Nigeria, and the University of Essex in Colchester, England. His first novels, Flowers and Shadows (1980) and The Landscapes Within (1981), employ surrealistic images to depict the corruption and lunacy of a politically scarred country. Two volumes of short stories, Incidents at the Shrine (1986) and Stars of the New Curfew (1988), portray the essential link in Nigerian culture between the physical world and the world of the spirits. Okri won the Booker Prize for his novel The Famished Road (1991), the story of Azaro, an abiku (‘spirit child’), and his quest for identity. The novels Songs of Enchantment (1993) and Infinite Riches (1998) continue the themes of The Famished Road, relating stories of dangerous quests and the struggle for equanimity in an unstable land. Okri’s other novels include Astonishing the Gods (1995); Dangerous Love (1996), about ‘star-crossed’ lovers in postcolonial Nigeria; In Arcadia (2002); and Starbook (2007). An African Elegy (1992) is a collection of poems that urges Africans to overcome the forces of chaos within their countries, and Mental Flight (1999) is a long poem. A Way of Being Free (1997) is a collection of Okri’s essays. Although typically not overtly political, Okri’s works nevertheless convey clear and urgent messages about the need for Africans to reforge their identities. OUTSTANDING AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS 2001 OBE 2000 Premio Palmi (Italy) 1995 Crystal Award (World Economic Forum) 1994 Premio Grinzane Cavour (Italy) 1993 Chianti Ruffino-Antico Fattore International Literary Prize 1991 Booker Prize for Fiction 1988 Guardian Fiction Prize 1987 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa Region, Best Book) 1987 Paris Review/Aga Khan Prize for Fiction BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR Novels 2014 The Age of Magic 2007 Starbook 2003 In Arcadia 1998 Infinite Riches 1996 Dangerous Love 1995 Astonishing the Gods 1993 Songs of Enchantment 1991 The Famished Road 1981 The Landscapes Within 1980 Flowers and Shadows Short stories 2009 Tales of Freedom 1999 Stars of the New Curfew 1986 Incidents at the Shrine Poetry 2012 Wild 1999 Mental Flight 1992 An African Elegy Agent / Rights Director: Nishta Hurry Nishta@aitkenalexander.co.uk
Essays 2011 A Time for New Dreams 1997 A Way of Being Free 1996 Birds of Heaven 35
FICTION
Ben Okri
The Famished Road Okri lures us into an enchanted spiritual trip of an abiku, a spirit child named Azaro, trapped between the world of living and the world of the dead. Azaro is trying to find reasons to choose to stay alive, in an unnamed state amidst civil war, which we manage to place in Africa. This tough spiritual quest of a child with a semi-naive mind in war devastated homeland is by itself a very challenging theme, but Okri’s literary genius is actually revealed in its true splendour when we approach the last part and gradually realize, that the abiku myth is used as a political metaphor. From reviews
Date of publication: 1991 Pages: 512 Category: contemporary fiction
‘They named me Lazaro,’ explains the narrator of The Famished Road, Ben Okri’s 1991 Booker winner. ‘But as I became a subject of much jest, and as many were uneasy with the connection between Lazaro and Lazarus, Mum shortened my name to Azaro.’ You might think of Azaro as a short Lazarus: the spirit-child, or abiku, of Yoruba myth, who flits between the paradisiacal “world of pure dreams” and the poverty and suffering of a modern west African slum, where children are born and die every day. Into this bewildering life, Azaro brings a spirit-eye: around the corrupt policemen and market traders flit imps, ghosts and homunculi, demons and sad souls whom only he can see. These spirit brothers tempt him to return to the world of the unborn, away from his hard-working parents and the mundane squabbles of political strife, caricatured here as a competition between ‘The Party of the Rich’ and ‘The Party of the Poor’. Okri’s novel – the first part of a trilogy – brought forward his distinctive brand of magical realism, but it also raised questions about some of the conventions of Anglo-African postcolonial writing. Is the abiku a youthful spirit – a Pan who sees the world in its full strangeness and plenitude – or one of Nigeria’s displaced children, cut off from a culture far richer than the material world of his birth? What does it mean for us to stay, like Azaro, in the ‘world of the living’ while reading this lush prose, full to bursting with fruits and seeds, palm wine and precious stones? ‘Our hunger can change the world,’ Azaro’s father tells him, ‘make it better, sweeter.’ Okri’s novel hungers for variety, for compassion and hope – and for an art that might make a feast out of famine. James Purdon, The Guardian Okri’s magical realism is distinctive; his prose is charged with passion and energy, electrifying in its imagery. Nan A. Talese, Publisher’s Weekly As this mind-boggling litany suggests, The Famished Road is not your typical book. Although almost the entire action of the story transpires in a small, impoverished village, Ben Okri has overlaid a whole world (and otherworld) on to this modest setting. Amidst a literary culture in which fantasy and realism, myth-making and myth-destroying, are often seen as incompatible approaches, this blurring of the boundaries is both pleasing and edifying. Ted Gioia, The New Canon
Agent / Rights Director: Nishta Hurry Nishta@aitkenalexander.co.uk
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Iztok Osojnik (Slovenia) Iztok Osojnik, born 1951, is a poet, fiction writer, literary scientist, essayist, editor, translator, artist, tour director, mountain climber, cultural manager, and festival organizer. His many occupations took him all around the world. A hippie, a rebel, a rock in the opposition musician, a trend setter in his youth, and a co-founder of the prankish movements Industrial dripping, Garbage art and Sous-realisme is still today an independent mind, proceeding along his own artistic paths. After having studied archaeology and history of art he graduated in Comparative Literature from the University of Ljubljana (1977). Postgraduate studies at Osaka Gaidai University (1980–82). In 2011 he completed his PhD (historical anthropology). From 1999 until October Photo by Tihomir Pinter 2004 he was the director of the International literary festival Vilenica and developed it from a provincial Central European event into one of the major European literary festivals. He was the founder and the art director of the Forum of Slavic cultures and at present runs The Golden Boat International Poetry Translating Workshop in Škocjan, the International Comparative Literature Conferences in Škocjan, and co-organizes the Vermont College MFA summer residency in Slovenia. He also initiated and co-founded Equrna gallery in Ljubljana as well as two well established literary festivals in Slovenia: Trnovo Tercets (Ljubljana) and Literary Talks in the Villa Herberstein (Velenje). He is a member of the editorial board of Tvrđa review (Zagreb), and was the national editor for the Dutch based international internet poetry magazine poetryinternational.org. He edited two presentations of Slovene literature: Slovenia, a Nation of Writers (with Sunandan Roy Chowdhurry, Sampark, fall 2002, New Delhi-London) and Unlocking the Aquarium, Contemporary Writing from Slovenia (with Fiona Sampson, Orient, spring 2004, Oxford Brooks University). So far he has published 30 collections of poetry, 5 novels, and 5 monographs on comparative literature, anthropology, and philosophy (in Slovenian language) as well as a number of essays and scientific articles. He published 6 poetry collections in English: Alluminations (City Gallery of Arts of Ljubljana), And Some Things Happen for the First Time (Modry Peter, Canada 2001), Mister Today (Jacaranda Press, California 2004), New and Selected Poems (Sampark, New Delhi 2010), Elsewhere (Pighog Press, Brighton 2011), and Wagner (Sampark 2017). His poems and essays were translated and published in 30 languages. He was awarded several national and international literary awards, scholarships and nominations, most lately the prestigious international award KONS 2011.
Official site: http://ia-zlaticoln.org
Contact: Iztok Osojnik iztok.osojnik@guest.arnes.si
OUTSTANDING AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS 2011 International Literary Award KONS for life work 2011 collection Izbrisano mesto was nominated for Jenko Poetry Prize 2008 Poetry Award at Delhi International Literary Festival 2006 novel Temna snov was nominated for Kresnik Award 2005 Iz Novega sveta was nominated for Prešernov sklad Award 2004 Mister Today published in USA was nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize 2004 Lucićev Lavreat Award 2003 Nekoč je bila Amerika poetry collection was nominated for Veronika Award 2001 Italian Poetry Award of Friuli – Venezia Giulia 1999 Veronika Award 1998 Jenko Poetry Prize 1997 Župančič Award 37
BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR Novels 2012 Svinje letijo v nebo / Pigs Fly into Sky 2005 Temna snov / Dark Matter 1999 Zgodba o Dušanu Pirjevcu in meni / A Narrative about Dušan Pirjevec and Me 1998 Melinda Podgorny 1991 Srčeva desetka / Ten of Hearts 1982 Poskus raziskave zakaj nisem ubila Maksa Cankarja / An Attempt to Investigate Why I Did Not Kill Maks Cankar 1981 Lp za Mayumi / Bye for Mayumi Academic monographs 2015 Symposia: Štiri razprave o slovenski poeziji in ena o Dušanu Pirjevcu / Symposia: Four Papers on Slovenian Poetry and One on Dušan Pirjevec 2013 Somrak suverenosti / Twilight of Sovereignity 2008 Pustinjak sa gore / Eremit from the Mountain 2006 Homo politicus 2004 Nasmeh Mona Lize / The Smile of Mona Lisa
Official site: http://ia-zlaticoln.org
Contact: Iztok Osojnik iztok.osojnik@guest.arnes.si
Poetry collections 2016 Hamlet 2016 Wagner 2016 Kosovel in sedem palčkov / Kosovel and Seven Dwarfs 2012 Poročena na rdeče / Married in Red 2011 ***asterisk 2010 Izbrisano mesto / Erased Place 2010 New and selected poems 2009 Globalni sistem za pozicioniranje / Global System for Positioning 2008 Dante na GSM / Dante on GSM 2007 111 ur / 111 hours 2006 Pesmi niča / Poems of Nothing 2004 Gospod Danes / Mister Today 2003 Iz novega sveta / From the New World 2003 Nekoč je bila Amerika / Once upon a Time There was America 2001 Temni julij / Dark July 1999 Spleen Berlina / Spleen of Berlin 1998 Razglednice za Darjo / Postcards for Darja 1997 Klesani kamni / Carved Stones 1995 Ogledala v času vojne / Mirrors in the Time of War 1994 Luske in perje / Scales and Feathers 1992 Srednje-evropski kvartet /Central-European Quartet 1988 Roman o roži / A Novel on a Rose 1987 America del Sur (together with D. P. HUP) 1984 Odgovornosti za ime konstruktivne anarhistke Melinde MlakarPločnik (with Bojan Brecelj and Klaus Detlef Olof) 1982 Teksti nevednosti Ferdinanda Pločnika / Texts of Ferdinands Plečnik’s Ignorance (with Klaus Detlef Olof) 1981 A scent of what is not a haiku 1981 Indija ali potovanje na dno noči / India or Journey to the Bottom of Night 1981 DOC 1981 Teksti resničnosti / Texts of Reality 1979 Vandali / Vandals 1977 Simpatični angel ali pljunek na pločniku / Likeable Angel or a Spit on the Pavement
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Iztok Osojnik
Ten of Hearts Srčeva desetka Selling points A wittily written book, full of surprising turns, fearless attacks against regime’s institutions, and a wide range of wild, emotionally stirring, and existential adventures. Description
Date of publication: 1981, reedition 1992 Pages: 110 Category: contemporary fiction
Written in a specific style, one that was later on defined as postmodern. The narrative is comprised of individual stories, the literary style of which is untwisting on several textual and narrative levels as well as places, from space to Arabic deserts. The stories follow the incidents of the protagonist (Janez Makavelj) who is also noted as the author of the book on its cover. The novel depicts the life of a young, insightful, non-subordinated man and his surroundings, as well as a rich literary treasury. Unusually critical and ironically written book does not only question the political regime and its institutions, but every conformist agreeing to conventional and nihilistic mechanisms of social life. Target market Young, intelligent, nonconformist readers without regard to gender, age, or profile, readers who are not ruined by the amusement triviality.
Iztok Osojnik
Melinda Podgorny: An Attempt to Investigate Why I Did Not Kill Maks Cankar Melinda Podgorny: Poskus raziskave zakaj nisem ubila Maksa Cankarja Selling points Funny, emotionally touching love novel that uses an extreme estrangement twist to transform a sentimental story into a multi-layered creative process, into a wild reading adventure, in which the reader, whether he or she wants it or not, unconsciously interacts as the partner in crime. Description
Date of publication: 1981, reedition 1998 Pages: 96 Category: contemporary fiction English synopsis available. English sample available.
Iztok Osojnik’s third postmodern novel, written on the back of the historical literary criticism vector of the western literature, illustrated by single rides between stops of the underground railway. A love novel between a boy and a girl at first sight breaks at the middle, the male writer turns into a female writer, and the ending of the novel offers a wittily executed transformation of what has been foretold as the ending – a transformation into a surprising love adventure between the female writer of the novel and her literary heroine. The novel can be read as a historical literary criticism allegory, an exciting story about impossible love, or as a tale of self-exposing, underlined with the author offering a unique answer on the question of existence. Target market
Official site: http://ia-zlaticoln.org Contact: Iztok Osojnik iztok.osojnik@guest.arnes.si
Readers who demand more than a cheap romance, readers who would like to step into the machine-gun of the text while it is being created without being burdened by a mentally demanding read. It is a book full of humour and healthy irony. 39
FICTION
Iztok Osojnik
Pigs Fly into Sky Svinje letijo v nebo Selling points Dystopian novel related to Orwell’s 1984, Zamyatin’s We, and Huxley’s Brave New World. Factual of our time, yet very much universal. Description
Date of publication: 2012 Pages: 176 Category: contemporary fiction English synopsis available. English sample available.
The story is set in a dystopian space and time. It describes a protagonist being chased by a gang of local writers led by the president of the writers’ association. The leader is actually a cloned pig, a consequence of an experimental error at the Chemical Institute for Genetics. The pig has thus transformed into a human criminal, full of hatred and spitefulness, one of the big criminals who obscenely enjoy massacres when they have the chance to. However hard the gang is trying, the protagonist, with the help of his little cousin with whom he shares an incestuous relationship, successfully evades them and travels off to the Sahara at the end. There are several minor stories interwoven into the main narrative, yet the main point is that nothing can destroy a free man, since freedom comes after freedom and not after crime. Target market A book for clever readers who will read about a world covered in façade and propaganda of freedom, democracy, and justice, behind which a criminal machine, one that is driven by very much concrete people in power, is hidden.
Iztok Osojnik
A Narrative about Dušan Pirjevec and Me Zgodba o Dušanu Pirjevcu in meni Selling points Humorous narrative about the relation between the author and his teacher Dušan Pirjevec, a renowned and charismatic professor, who, on the basis of his novel theory opens a door to new dimensions of fiction writing on the edge of meditative and polemic narration. Description
Date of publication: 1999 Pages: 91 Category: contemporary fiction
Official site: http://ia-zlaticoln.org Contact: Iztok Osojnik iztok.osojnik@guest.arnes.si
The book is written as a dialogue between a professor and his understanding of the history of the European novel as that of the question of action and idea, and his student, a writer of new fiction. By thoroughly studying the professor’s mentioned view of novel and by building a critique of his approach, it creates an alternative novelesque story as well as offers a departure from theoretical language without abandoning its rigorousness. It is a story between a student and a teacher at a point when a dialogue that never took place due to professor’s passing opens up their positions in mutual equality, proving both the quality of the professor’s teaching as well as an awaked and deep understanding being the aim of the truth of the European novel as a fiction mechanism of the constitution of an individual in his fatality. Target market Serious (European) novel readers 40
FICTION
Iztok Osojnik
Dark Matter, or Notes about Insomnia Temna snov ali zapiski o neki nespeÄ?nosti Selling points Iztok Osojnik’s typically witty style, full of surprising turns, deep thinking, ironical deconstructions, a text for demanding readers, who like to immerse themselves into big literary texts. Description
Date of publication: 2005 Pages: 608 Category: contemporary fiction English synopsis available. English sample available.
A novel without a story and yet with many stories that from the beginning to the end arch in a barely noticeable development from the initial everyday normality to complete destruction of the objective world, family, and social connection, as well as final dissolution of the classic western individuality and identity. Despite the apparent surface pessimism, the novel is prevalent in optimism of the third reality that proves to be the positive life platform at the end, the existential power of the literary, and of poetry as the only true and reliable positive human fate and steadiness. The dark matter, which is not only a metaphor of the living reality, is actually piercing through from the very beginning – at first invisibly, unconsciously, covered with nonsense, torn up fragmentarity, and indications of a classical story, all deceiving the reader but keeping him or her highly alert with the electric magnetism of language. This live current is nonsensical and intangible, but only due to the borders of the literary universe being too far for us to see with the naked eye. Only a recurring reading enables to surmise the dark totality that simmers in an individual as that of his own but beyond. Target market Readers of serious novelesque texts
Official site: http://ia-zlaticoln.org
Contact: Iztok Osojnik iztok.osojnik@guest.arnes.si 41
Minoli Salgado (Sri Lanka / United Kingdom) Minoli Salgado was born in Malaysia and grew up in Sri Lanka, South East Asia and England. She is a Reader in English at the University of Sussex where she teaches contemporary literature. Her current research focuses on narratives of trauma. Her novel, A Little Dust on the Eyes (Peepal Tree Press, 2014), won the first SI Leeds Literary Prize and was longlisted for the DSC Prize in South Asian Literature. She is the author of the critically acclaimed study, Writing Sri Lanka: Literature, Resistance and the Politics of Place (Routledge, 2007), which focuses on Sri Lankan literature in relation to the civil war. In 2012, she was selected as the Olympic poet for Sri Lanka in London’s Poetry Parnassus. She has participated in literary festivals in the UK, Sri Lanka Photo by Alan Holden and Nicaragua, given readings in Toronto, Lisbon, New Orleans, Virginia, Aarhus and Izmir, spoken on censorship at PEN events and served as a literary judge for Amnesty International. Her poetry and fiction have been published internationally in journals such as Wasafiri, Short Story, and Asia Literary Review, and anthologised in the UK and US. OUTSTANDING AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS 2016 A Little Dust on the Eyes was longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2012 SI Leeds Literary Prize for unpublished fiction BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR Novels 2014 A Little Dust on the Eyes Monograph 2007 Writing Sri Lanka: Literature, Resistance and the Politics of Place
Official site: https://minolisalgado.com
Agent / Rights Director: Hannah Bannister hannah@peepaltreepress.com 42
FICTION
Minoli Salgado
A Little Dust on the Eyes Description Text is situated in the late 1980s in southern Sri Lanka. Savi, a Sri Lankan research student in the UK, has lost her way in life, when she unexpectedly receives a wedding invitation. Meanwhile in a coastal town in Sri Lanka, her cousin Renu is researching the secret of Bradley’s father’s sudden disappearance as she works with the wives and widows of the disappeared. On Savi’s return to Sri Lanka, the cousins are reunited and compelled to confront truths that put them into direct conflict in their understanding of both the past and themselves. As the story unfolds to its unavoidable end, a tsunami strikes and carries them all into a future that seems to be even more disturbing than the past. From reviews Date of publication: 2014 Pages: 192 Category: contemporary fiction Rights sold to: KUD Police Dubove, Slovenia English synopsis available. English sample available.
An extraordinary novel of a country trying to come to its senses, to see and hear the thousands ‘disappeared’ by political conflict and environmental catastrophe. Minoli Salgado’s delicate, determined lyricism compels us to think of Sri Lanka’s missing and the silenced, always conscious of the formidable challenges of reading and writing about those displaced from us by time and tide. The result is a literary latticework of remarkable craft and subtlety that brings into focus Sri Lanka’s troubled past while shaping a necessary ethical response upon which the future might depend. Professor John McLeod, University of Leeds For much too long, the literature of Sri Lanka has been overshadowed by that of its larger, more boisterous cousin India. But in Minoli Salgado’s wonderful book, Sri Lanka comes alive not only as a place of mythology, tragedies, both human and natural, but as a land of dreams and of a people whose resilient spirit has a Chekhovian beauty. Like Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost, Salgado’s work is an example of how we make literature out of the fire of near extinction. Her prose has the sublime beauty of a well- polished heirloom; something to be treasured. Syl Cheney-Coker A Little Dust on the Eyes is a luminous novel, enchanting from beginning to end. Minoli Salgado is a splendid writer who transcends culture and nationality and speaks to the universal human condition. Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize Winner
Official site: https://minolisalgado.com
A Little Dust on the Eyes is an extraordinary achievement, taking the reader into the multi-layered world of a Sri Lankan coastal community, a world where too many of the terrible events which happened during the Civil War can be still too raw, painful, and dangerous to acknowledge. Salgado’s evocation of this world and her characters is tender and compassionate, yet vivid, as we experience the tentative reunion of two cousins in the weeks preceding the Boxing Day Tsunami and its devastation. Lyn Innes, Emeritus Professor, University of Kent
Agent / Rights Director: Hannah Bannister hannah@peepaltreepress.com 43
Sabina Štrubelj (Slovenia) Sabina Štrubelj is a Slovenian author, born in 1988 in Ljubljana. After obtaining Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism (2012) and a Master’s Degree in Publishing Studies (2015), she started to work as a book publisher in a smaller Slovenian publishing house (eBesede, d.o.o.). She has been writing ever since she can remember, her first major success was a short story award in Ona magazine in 2013. In 2015 she published her debut novel Lavender Hotel (eBesede), in 2017 she announced her second novel The Lady in Grey (release: September 2017). The Lady in Grey is her first self-publishing project. She writes contemporary romance mixed with other genres. Her writing is fun, yet mysterious, and absolutely readable! OUTSTANDING AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS Photo by Žiga Štrubelj 2013 Ona magazine short story award BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR 2017 Siva dama / The Lady in Grey 2015 Hotel Lavanda / Lavender Hotel
Official site: https://www.sabina-strubelj.com
Contact: Sabina Štrubelj sabina@sabina-strubelj.com 44
FICTION
Sabina Štrubelj
Lavender Hotel Hotel Lavanda Valentina is a Slovenian girl that has everything: a perfect man, beautiful apartment, and a job she loves. But in just one short week her life is ruined. All of a sudden, she finds herself single, unemployed, and back at her mum’s place. Luckily, only a short time ago she found a funny French lawyer at her door, trying to convince her that some stranger has left her a whole lot of a hotel! In Provence! Since she’s got nothing left to lose, Valentina decides to check out the place herself. She drives to France to experience the adventure of her lifetime. But – is she ready for everything she’s about to find out? From reviews Date of publication: 2015 Pages: 270 Category: women’s fiction English synopsis available. English sample available.
Not only is the novel a great read, it also encourages one to follow their dreams from time to time, and actually make them come true. Urška Krišelj Grubar, Zarja The young author represents her longer form debut, and we must confirm that her love story can proudly stand side-by-side to wellknown authors of the genre. Renate Rugelj, Bukla
Sabina Štrubelj
The Lady in Grey Siva dama Lana is a beautiful Slovenian, too wild and too sassy to keep a job. When she becomes an assistant of a CEO in a large telecommunication company, it looks like life became kinder to her. But it’s not all roses! She hates her boss, and he hates her back. And to make it even more complicated, there is the lady in grey, who keeps appearing in her life, raising many questions in Lana’s head. Who is she? Why does it seem like she knows everything about her? Why does she help her? And above all – what does she want?
Date of publication: 2017 Pages: 336 Category: women’s fiction English synopsis available. English sample available. Official site: https://www.sabina-strubelj.com Contact: Sabina Štrubelj sabina@sabina-strubelj.com 45
Olga Tokarczuk (Poland) The Polish writer, essayist, and scriptwriter Olga Tokarczuk was born in 1962 in Sulechów, Lower Silesia. She graduated in Clinical Psychology from the University of Warsaw and worked for a while as a psychotherapist after completing her studies, but soon began to focus on writing professionally. She debuted in 1979 with a series of short stories in the Na przełaj magazine and has also published her work in the Wroclaw-based Mandragora magazine and the Życie Literackie. Her debut novel, The Journey of the Book People, was published in 1993 and was awarded the Polish Publishers’ Association Prize. Ever since then, Olga Tokarczuk’s novels and short stories have ranked her amongst the very top of Polish contemporary writers of prose. She is an outstanding narrator, who manages to thrill both critics and readers alike with the innovativeness and diversity of her works in regard to content as well as genre. She has published nine novels, two books of short prose, and two collections of essays for which she has received a string of Polish and foreign literary awards. She has won the Nike Readers’ Choice Photo by Jacek Kołodziejski Award no less than four times, and in 2008 was awarded with the premier Nike Literary Award for the novel Runners. Her books have been translated into most European languages. Many of her works have also been adapted for the stage as well as the screen. She conducts seminars on prose fiction as part of the creative writing programmes at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow and at Opole University. She was also one of the initiators of the International Short Story Festival in Wroclaw. Today she lives and works in Lower Silesia. OUTSTANDING AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS Polish Book Publishers’ Association Award Kościelski Foundation Award NIKE Award – three-time winner of Readers’ Choice Award NIKE Literary Award for the novel Runners Nominated for the ANGELUS Central European Literary Award for the novel Runners The NIKE Award 2015 winner for The Books of Jacob BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR Novels 2014 Księgi Jakubowe / The Books of Jacob 2009 Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych / Guide Your Plow Through the Bones of the Dead 2006 Anna w grobowcach Świata / Anna In in the Catacombs 2004 Ostatnie historie / Final Stories 1995 E. E. 1993 Podróż ludzi Księgi / The Journey of the Book People 1996 Prawiek i inne czasy / Prawiek and Other Times 1998 Dom dzienny, dom nocny / House of Day, House of Night
Official site: http://www.tokarczuk.wydawnictwoliterackie.pl
Agent / Rights Director: Joanna Dąbrowska j.dabrowska@wydawnictwoliterackie.pl
Short stories 2007 Bieguni / Runners 2001 Gra na wielu bębękach / Playing Many Drums 1997 Szafa / The Cupboard Essays 2016 Lalka i perła / The Doll and the Pearl 2012 Moment niedźwiedzia / Bear’s Moment 46
FICTION
Olga Tokarczuk
The Books of Jacob Księgi Jakubowe The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on the eve of the partitions. A multicultural, multi-ethnic land closer to Istanbul than to Paris, and a man from nowhere who will change the fate of thousands of people. A great journey from peasant cottages, via aristocratic manors, to imperial chambers. Mid-18th century, Podolia. It is here that Father Benedykt Chmielowski is trying to describe the whole world in his huge book, and there, at the house of the castellan’s wife Katarzyna Kossakowska, influential people meet, who will make an impact on many people’s lives. It is also here, at Elisha Schorr’s house that Jews are waiting for the coming of the Messiah. Date of publication: 2014 Pages: 912 Category: contemporary fiction Rights sold to: Armenia, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Macedonia, The Netherlands, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, , Turkey, Ukraine, UK, US English synopsis available. English sample available.
In Podolia too, there appears a young, handsome and charismatic Jew – Jacob Leibowitz Frank. The mysterious stranger from faraway Smyrna begins to proclaim the ideas that will divide the Jewish community. For some he is a heretic, for others a saviour, who soon attracts a circle of devoted followers. The unrest he unleashes can change the course of history and transform the shape of this part of the world. Olga Tokarczuk pays great attention to the details of the age – the realities, the architecture, the clothes, and smells. We visit aristocratic residences, Catholic presbyteries, and Jewish homesteads, pious and immersed in reading of mysterious writings. Before us is a bygone Poland, in which Christianity, Judaism, and Islam stood side by side. From reviews The Books of Jacob is an ambiguous novel, with as many meanings as the biography on which it is based. Tokarczuk draws upon Jacob Frank’s life story, but it is not just the main protagonist that she brings to life. Her reconstruction of the setting of the action is remarkable … Similarly intriguing are the portraits of the social groups she describes. Yet in the foreground is the irreconcilable conflict of ideas, which, in the world created by Tokarczuk, liberates, destroys, reopens, stigmatises as the Other, and forces one to discover one’s own weaknesses. Bernadetta Darska, Onet.pl books
Official site: http://www.tokarczuk.wydawnictwoliterackie.pl
With The Books of Jacob, Tokarczuk has entered a new role which perhaps she has even been readying herself for some time: here, she is like nothing else but an obstreperous 21st-century prophetess who reaches back into the nation’s history to give it a good shake, iron it out and interpret it in her own way. Although the action of The Books of Jacob is set 250 years ago, takes place in small provincial towns or exotic cities and concerns matters that appear esoteric and obscure, this is a terribly relevant and important book. Extraordinary reading …” Aleksandra Lipczak, Culture.pl
Agent / Rights Director: Joanna Dąbrowska j.dabrowska@wydawnictwoliterackie.pl 47
EHO Echoes of Realities
Kulturno-umetniĹĄko druĹĄtvo Police Dubove | Vnanje Gorice, Nova pot 142 | SI-1351 Brezovica pri Ljubljani | Slovenia | E-mail: drustvo@policadubova.org | Website: http://policadubova.org