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Adults

Mårbacka, imanje u Švedskoj

20,00  17,00 

Selma Lagerlöf, znamenita švedska spisateljica i prva žena koja je dobila Nobelovu nagradu za književnost, objavila je 1922. djelo naslovljeno „Mårbacka“, inspirirano istoimenim seoskim imanjem na kojem je provela djetinjstvo. Knjiga se sastoji od trideset sedam kratkih pripovijesti, podijeljenih u pet tematskih cjelina: Put u Strömstad, Pripovijesti stare domaćice, Stare građevine i stari ljudi, Nova Mårbacka te Svakodnevica i slavlja. U nizu živih prizora vidimo djecu obitelji Lagerlöf, njihovog osebujnog oca, uvijek spremnog na igru, nježnu majku, očevu neudanu sestru, čudesnu baku koja im pjeva i pripovijeda priče, kućnu poslugu te niz posjetitelja. Idilu djetinjstva rano prekida Selmina iznenadna bolest koja je središnja tema prvog ciklusa priča. Djevojčici su tek tri godine kad jednog dana shvaća da ne može hodati. A kad ponovno uspije stati na noge – u Strömstadu, na zapadnoj obali Švedske, kamo je obitelj krenula u nadi da će joj pomoći boravak uz more – Selma je uvjerena da to može zahvaliti susretu s rajskom pticom. Opisujući događaje u trećem licu, autorica izuzetno suptilno dočarava stanja dječje psihe, pridajući veliku važnost dječjim razmišljanjima, osjećajima, maštanjima. U ostalim cjelinama pripovijeda o snovitim, pomalo jezivim pričama stare domaćice, povezanim s prostorom u kojem djeca odrastaju, o negdašnjim vlasnicima Mårbacke, o autoričinom ocu (kojeg neki smatraju glavnim likom ovog djela) i njegovim naporima da Mårbacku pretvori u veliko i otmjeno imanje. Posljednji niz pripovijesti dočarava raznolike događaje, upotpunjujući idiličnu sliku svijeta koji treperi na krhkoj granici između proživljene stvarnosti i mitskog doživljaja djetinjstva kao razdoblja vedrine. (Sanja Lovrenčić)

Herbarium – Stories of Plants

11,00  9,35 

Jana Prević Finderle’s “Herbarium” could both be seen as a follow-up to her debut “The travertine bridge”, published in 2019, and its sheer opposite. One could argue that it’s a follow-up, because it is a book of short prose inspired by the author’s own experiences, delivered in a simple and direct way – and that it’s an opposite, as “The travertine bridge” was dedicated to travels and encounters, a horizontal motion through space, while “Herbarium”, a book about the lives of plants and the people closest to the author, focuses on travelling vertically, through time. For every herbarium, including Jana’s, is a book of memories. It seems that we live in times of increased sensitivity for the green world that surrounds us, a world that is getting more endangered with every day. But Jana’s soft spot for plantlife isn’t a result of any trend, although the need to create a herbarium made of words could have been influenced by the increasing eco-awareness in times of global warming. This author has, since early childhood, been living her life in close connection to plantlife, which enables her to talk about it from a personal, almost lyrical, perspective. Her authentic language depicts a simple closeness. The focus doesn’t lie on a problem or on the author’s knowledge of botany – which she clearly has – but rather on her personal experiences, her discoveries, little miracles she encounters, like the ones where her aunt Mirjana, in Jana’s adolescent days of spleen, tells her about an acorn and an oak.

Silences

10,00  8,50 

In this book that addresses every generation words and images blend into an impressive poetical unity. Using drawings with simple, clear lines and concise sentences, the author tells a story that’s possible to read and experience on different levels. She talks about the close connection of human beings with nature, about changes and the importance of that – sometimes concealed, but still permanent – relationship. The tree is also a symbol of the author’s inner being, a deep and vital center where her strength arises from, a strength of the utmost importance in encounters with the outside world and collisions with its walls.

In the Rhythm of Horror – The Abyss of Dances

13,00  11,05 

“In the Rhythm of Horror – The Abyss of Dances” is a collection of six fantasy stories by young Croatian authors. The stories were chosen via a competition that Mala zvona held in 2020, after which authors Josip Čekolj, Mateja Pavlic, Marin Pelaić, Ines Vajzović, Martina Vidaić and Orin Ivan Vrkaš were chosen. Except for the characteristic fantastical elements of the unexpected and wondrous, the motive of dance also connects the stories – a dance of the dead and the arisen, a dance of half-humans and half-animals in the moonlight, an oriental dance of wraiths in black capes. These obnoxious dancers contribute to an uneasy atmosphere but at the same time, they create an aura of mystical beauty. Each story is illustrated with a black and white piece by Klara Rusan Klarxy – her work masterly depicts the merge of the real and the otherworldly, and makes a world that might seem dark and bizarre mysteriously alluring.

Notes on the House, Notes from Absence

14,00  11,90 

The text of these Notes flows like a mountain stream or breeze: it describes scenes from writers’ residences in which the author stayed for a little over a year, and the reflections associated with these places make up the bulk of the book. These are notes about the journey, woven with the subtle skill of a top connoisseur of language and working with words. Atmosphere, associations and images are innumerable; thoughts, questions – we recognize them all, we ask ourselves all that. But here and there, as when the folds of a fabric are separated by a gust of wind, readers see that this is not all: from the notes made between the trips they catch hints of the horizon of harsh and stupid reality that led the author to go on the road again and again. “You cover reality with a veil and you see better,” she writes in this book. Traveling with clear thoughts and open eyes, Sanja Lovrenčić covers and reveals reality with a unique fabric woven of words. (Iva Valentić, ed.)

Some Call them Lady-Writers

14,00  11,90 

This study in literary history brings to light various characteristics of the Croatian female literary scene in the late 19th and early 20th century. Focusing on three key figures – Dragojla Jarnević, Jagoda Truhelka and Ivana Brlić Mažuranić – the author makes visible a complex tissue of influences, shared existential preoccupations, positions on writing and recurrent literary motifs. The fundamental question leading her research – what was it like to be a female writer in a period where writing was still largely attributed to a male intellect? – thus gets a rich answer that tries to restore justice to silenced female voices. As the area of Croatian female literature is still largely unexplored, Dujić’s study presents an almost pioneering work that brings the reader not only a historical analysis, but also excerpts from previously unpublished archive materials: letters, diaries and personal notes by the three great writers around whom this book revolves.

The Marriage Diaries

14,00  11,90 

The edition that will thrill every classical music lover! The year is 1840, in the city of Leipzig; the young but already internationally famous pianist Clara Wieck and the still quite unknown composer Robert Schumann just succeeded in getting married, despite various obstacles. The day after the wedding, upon Robert’s whish, they start writing down all their needs and desires, joys and sorrows of matrimonial life. They take turns in writing, each of them covering the events of one week, at first with a lot of passion. Many celebrated musicians of the period pass through the pages of their double diary; Robert and Clara speak about art, home concerts, days and weeks filled with music, but they also speak about love. In these first years of their marriage, years that have been among the most productive for Robert and a sort of setback for Clara, life is good, but it isn’t without its’ own shadows…

 

Self-Portrait in the Study

15,00  12,75 

Self-Portrait in the Study, the recently published autobiography of one of the leading contemporary continental philosophers Giorgio Agamben offers the reader a wide set of interesting motives. Throughout the book, the author recalls all the intellectual encounters which had a decisive influence on his thought, creating, in this way, a magnificent portrait of the late 20th century philosophical and literary scene: following Agamben from encounter to encounter, the reader meets Martin Heidegger, Guy Debord, Giorgio Manganelli, Elsa Morante, Ingeborg Bachmann, Gershom Scholem… The descriptions of these meetings and friendships are interlaced with authentic philosophical meditations on painting, language, poetry, history and inheritance, and, in the final analysis, with glimpses of that “universal science of man” about which Agamben dreamt together with Italo Calvino and Claudio Rugafiori. Agamben’s autobiography thus offers a lyrical synthesis of the three elements whose endless perturbations characterize the whole of the philosopher’s oeuvre: literature, philosophical discourse and a private life that must remain hidden forever.

 

Book #2912

Zagreb through the Lens of Petar Gunjača

14,00  11,90 

In the legacy of Petar Gunjača (1924-2017), former employee in a furniture factory, known as photographer only to fans and collectors of photo equipment, were found several thousand photos, among them numerous shots of Zagreb from the 1960s and 1970s. Sometimes accidentally captured street scenes, sometimes persistent shooting of a same motive, sometimes deftly captured sport movement, suggestively evoke various urban atmospheres. Leading a kind of parallel life behind the lens, Petar Gunjača offers an impressive photographic opus and an interesting historical document. Inspired by Gunjača’s photos, the text writer Sanja Lovrenčić articulated her vision of the town in thirteen short prose fragments, intertwined with the story of the photographer’s life.

 

Book #3359

Three Tales from The Tale of Tales

10,00  8,50 

Mala zvona is proud to present the first Croatian translation of a selection of stories from Giambattista Basile’s famousTale of Tales (Lo cunto de li cunti or Il Pentamerone)

Basile’s collection, written in the 17th century in Neapolitan dialect, served as an inspiration to numerous fairy tale writers over the centuries; Basile’s motifs can be traced through many famous collections, such as those written by Perrault or the brothers Grimm.

In these grotesque stories – which are by no means intended for children – Basile teaches the reader about virtue, vice, deception and love while using a flamboyant Baroque rhetoric. Our selection includes the following stories: The Enchanted DoeThe Flea and The Old Woman Who Was Skinned who were also used as a pretext for Matteo Garrone’s multiple award-winning movie Il racconto dei racconti.

 

Joseph Conrad as I Knew Him

10,00  8,50 

In these biographic fragments  Jessie Conrad sketches the picture of her husband Joseph, one of the greatest writers of English twentieth century literature: nervous, a bit weird, attached to his family in  his own way, but first of all, obsessed with his work. At the same time, the reader catches a glimpse of Jessie herself, the almost ideal writer’s wife of old times: typing his texts, cooking, economizing, welcoming guests, raising the children, coping with reality in every possible way  instead of Joseph. But the act of writing puts her beyond the role of mother, wife and housewife: taking the courage to write down this intimate testimony, she creates a place for herself in Conrad’s verbal space and becomes a writer in her own right.

Zagreb Childhood in the Sixties

10,00  8,50 

Sanja Lovrenčić wrote the book of prose fragments entitled Zagreb Childhood in the Sixties while she was working on the translation of Walter Benjamin’s autobiographical Berlin Childhood around 1900,and her writing is therefore marked by an interesting duality. Zagreb Childhood functions as an autobiographical discourse and deals with the elements typical for that genre: introspection, sketches of the chosen period, a fine nostalgia for childhood, which an adult can reach only as a selection of fragments that can never be made into a coherent whole; those elements could be labelled as personal and local. On the other hand, however, the book is a response to a literary text, a reaction not to a childhood or a social change, but to a certain type of writing. This leads to a completely different set of ideas, that we might call inherently literary – intertextuality, the fictionalization of the self, the use of poetic language and lyrical fragments that simultaneously connote and transcend personal experience. Thus Zagreb Childhood combines two elements that are necessary to make a quality literature: inclusion in the local context, as well as its constant dissolution – both intimacy and universality.