Novel
Kužiš, stari moj
Not translated into English
Zvonimir Majdak · 1970
Synopsis
Two apprentices from a suburb of Zagreb, Glista and the one who tells the story, with no trade and no plans, drift between the taverns, the streets and the cinemas. Glista finds work washing cars for a boss and falls for his wife, Mrs Gizela: to get her to notice him, he buys himself a new coat, a tie, a white shirt. Around them pass a student from Osijek who lifts weights, Kurbla, who always has money without anyone knowing where it comes from, and Glista's father, a scrap-metal dealer.
Context
The novel appeared in Zagreb in 1970, from the Matica hrvatska. It is written from start to finish in the speech of the city, Zagreb Kajkavian mixed with standard language and anglicisms, that of the craftsmen and young people of the outskirts, even in the characters' thoughts, which critics have sometimes held against it, as they have its having been finished too quickly. Vanča Kljaković made a film of it in 1973, from a screenplay written with the author, and Miro Međimorec a monodrama at the Teatar &TD in Zagreb, which Mladen Budiščak performed for twenty years. The author gave it two sequels, in 1975 and in 1980.
Who it is for
A novel written in the Zagreb slang of its day, a mixture of Kajkavian and anglicisms, which demands attention even from the Croatian reader. No French translation.
Prizes and reception
One of the founding books of Croatian jeans prose and a bookshop success: a critic judged in 1971 that few Croatian writers had known one like it.
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