Bøger udgivet af Sandorf Passage

Thirty Slovenian writers. Thirty years of Slovenian independence. From the political to the absurd, from the sordid to the sublime, the stories collected in It's Already the Morning of the Last Day span the history and cultures that have shaped Slovenia since the dissolution of Yugoslavia. The award-winning authors featured in this anthology represent a vast and varied range of talent and voices that is equal parts exciting and revealing.

It's 1481, and as seen from the centers of power in Rome and Venice, the cultures of Europe are under threat from the expansion of the Ottoman Empire. When the exalted Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror dies his eldest son, Bayezid, takes the throne. However, discontented factions within the Ottoman army urge Mehmed's second son, Cem, a well-educated and experienced warrior, to oppose his brother's ascension, setting off a ruthless power struggle and forcing Cem into long years of exile, a pawn for European powers that are struggling to maintain the order they have imposed on the continent over the course of centuries. The Case of Cem, Vera Mutafchieva's sprawling novel of court intrigue, maintains lasting resonance for being a personal exploration of emigration and loss as told through the historical era during which the politics of the East and West were sketched out with utter clarity. These early lines of demarcation, as voiced through Christian and Muslim emissaries, power hungry rulers, unflinching warriors, and poets, have indelibly influenced the word as we know it today.

Sebastijan Pregelj's award-winning novel, In Elvis's Room, tells the turbulent story of Slovenian independence from the perspective of Jan, an only child growing up in Ljubljana. Jan's life in 1980s Yugoslavia is idyllic, filled with family outings, Star Wars, and good friends. But as Jan gets older, and the ties that have held together Yugoslavia begin to tatter, the contours of life change. He and his friends, Elvis and Peter, are bullied walking to and from school, because Elvis is Muslim and Peter is a bookworm. The friends stand by one another, strengthening not only their friendships but those of the families, particularly Elvis's. Jan spends many happy hours with Elvis's family, but then he is called up for military service and good times are replaced with whispers about religion and purges. In Elvis's Room confronts history--both its beauty and horror--without hiding anything, and in doing so tells a highly nuanced, emotionally-charged story about living with memories from a country that no longer exists and what it requires of individuals to carry that immense weight.

Peter Zilahy's The Last Window-Giraffe takes its title from the fact that the first and last letters of the Hungarian alphabet match the first letters for the words "window" and "giraffe." This genre-defying book, originally written in Hungarian, has been translated into twenty-two languages and is often cited as one of the inspirations for the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine. On the surface, this autobiographical fiction rendered by Zilahy's incisive x-ray vision--a heady mix of history, memoir, and farce of the highest order--is about the protests in Belgrade in 1996. But viewed through a wider lens it serves up the absurdity of all manner of authoritarianism that resonates as much today as it first did upon publication in 1999.

In the early 1990s, as Yugoslavia begins to crumble, so too does a woman, known only as Mother. Ostracized by her Croatian neighbors because of her Serbian background, the bright cheer Mother brought to her role as a wife and mother is darkened by the onset of mental illness that devours an entire family. Seen through the acerbic and wry perspective of Mother's eldest daughter, Divine Child paints a picture of the forces that batter an individual into shape in a time of economic crisis and rabid nationalism. This unforgettable survival narrative won the 2013 Jutarnji list Award for Novel of the Year in Croatia.