Novel
Pastorala
Not translated into English
Vlado Žabot · 1994
Synopsis
Nina lives within a community of believers whose law confines everyone. She regards the Christian principle of commanded love, the love one owes one's neighbour out of duty, as hypocrisy, and the faith demanded of her as idolatry, and she rebels against both. She seeks a direct love, from herself to the real being facing her, without passing through rules. Around her, the impure, the ugly and the repulsive attract as much as they repel.
Context
The novel appeared in 1994 from Wieser, in Klagenfurt and Salzburg. Franc Zadravec reads in it the opposition between the freedom of the individual and the ethical norm set against him by the group of the faithful, a demythologisation carried out in the name of love; another study examines its aesthetics of the ugly and the abject, in Julia Kristeva's sense. It was translated into Macedonian in 2006, and its author's work is on the syllabus of Slovenian and foreign universities.
Who it is for
A novel of ideas, dark and dense, in which a woman's revolt against her community carries the whole narrative; it has not been translated into French.
Prizes and reception
Prešeren Foundation Prize in 1996, two years after its publication; the following year, the author received the Kresnik Prize for another novel.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.