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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.)
Format: 13×20
ISBN: 978-953-8313-10-3
Number of pages: 164
Soft cover
Published: 2020.
A literery testimony of an outward and inward journey by the renowned Swiss traveler and writer. What could have eassily become a simple travelogue becomes a diary of a slow sinking into loneliness, fever, exotic beauties and deadly menaces of a “chimerical island” – Sri Lanka. Combining humour and poetry, N. Bouvier created penetrating, unforgettable literary images.
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.
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.
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.
