“La Morte Amoureuse” and Other Stories
A selection of fantastic short stories by the French classic Théophile Gautier, in Croatian translation.
11,00 € 6,60 €
Herbarium – Stories of Plants
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.
Format: 11×20
ISBN: 978-953-8313-52-3
Number of pages: 105
Paperback
Published: 2022.
Slični naslovi
In the Rhythm of Horror – The Abyss of Dances
“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.
Silences
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.
Self-Portrait in the Study
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