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I Saw Her That Night

Drago Jancar author Michael Biggins translator

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Dalkey Archive Press

Published:31st Mar '16

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I Saw Her That Night cover

I Saw Her That Night, a love story in time of war, is a novel about a few years in the life and mysterious disappearance of Veronika Zarnik, a young bourgeois woman from Ljubljana, sucked into the whirlwind of a turbulent period in history. We follow her story from the perspective of five different characters, who also talk about themselves, as well as the troubled Slovenian times before and during World War II; times that swallowed, like a Moloch, not only the people of various beliefs involved in historical events, but also those who lived on the fringes of tumultuous events, which they did not even fully comprehend—they only wanted to live. But “only” to live was an illusion: it was a time when, even under the seemingly safe and idyllic shelter of a manor house in Slovenia, it was impossible to avoid the rushing train of violence.

Friendship and betrayal, hope and guilt and the torment of remembering are Jancar’s themes. His liquid balancing of illusion and reality sustains this kaleidoscopic, communal war novel, which moves relentlessly towards an obvious yet symbolic act of violence

* Irish Times *

The economy with which Jancar creates memorable characters and moments while never letting the reader forget the war, the tumult of Yugoslavia, or the incursion of communism is astonishing

* Kirkus Revie

ISBN: 9781564789976

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

194 pages