Novel
Bolja polovica hrabrosti
Not translated into English
Ivan Slamnig · 1972
Synopsis
Flaks, in his thirties, a language teacher, writer and translator, meets up at the inn of the Two Pheasants with his group of former school friends, Zita, Berti, Hercl. They decide on an excursion to Brestovje, where he plans to copy old inscriptions for his philology thesis. At Zita's he flirts with her cousin Anita and meets their aunt, Mrs Matilda, who gives him to read the novel she is writing in the manner of days gone by, and this novel within the novel gradually takes hold of him.
Context
The novel appeared in 1972 and remained its author's only one; he also published two story collections. It is built as a mise en abyme: Flaks's first-person narrative frames fragments of Mme Matilda's novel, written in the manner of nineteenth-century Croatian prose, so that the dialogue between literature and life becomes also that between the present and tradition. Critics have linked it to jeans prose because of its band of friends and its theme of flight.
Who it is for
About one hundred and twenty pages, a first-person narrative into which are inserted the pages of an old-fashioned novel. No French translation.
Prizes and reception
Regarded by Croatian critics as the country's first postmodern novel, and as the starting point of its postmodern fiction.
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