Tereza

Tereza
Slovenija
katarina-marinčič-foto-stane-jeršič-150x150
Katarina Marinčič
I’m looking for a person who could tell me the story of my parents. Darling Ivan, only stories can save us from certain hardships.

The novel Tereza (1989) spans over the period from the end of the 19th century to the 1920s, it takes place in Ljubljana that was gravely affected by an earthquake in 1895, in the Slovenian countryside and in Vienna. The author’s debut work was described as an attempt of a family or epochal novel. The story connects the fates of a Ljubljana merchant Barda and his family, especially his two sons, Ernest and Ivan. Ernest who suffers from asthma spends a part of his youth in a mountain village where he meets his great love. The major turn in Ivan’s life comes about when he moves to Vienna to study medicine. Erotic and existential relationships among the characters are in the focus of author’s interest whearas the historical period is just a – very convincingly crafted – setting. A part of narration is in a form of epistolar novel, while the entire novel could be read as pastiche, referring to models from 18th and 19th century.

The writer Katarina Marinčič, born in 1968 in Ljubljana, received a PhD in French literature (Balzac) at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana where she now works as a lecturer of the 18th and 19th century French literature. She is the author of the novels Tereza (1989), Rožni vrt (Rose Garden, 1992) and Prikrita harmonija (Hidden Harmony, 2001), a story set in the time around the First World War, for which she received the prestigious Kresnik Award. Her book O treh (Three, 2005), awarded with the Fabula Award in 2007, contains three longer novellas that take place in different historical periods. Her latest novel Po njihovih besedah (In their own words, 2014) was proclaimed the best Slovenian book of 2014 by the Slovenian Literary Critics’ Association. The novel Prikrita harmonija was also published in German (Die Verborgene Harmonie, 2008), whereas O treh was published in French and Macedonian (TroisZa trite, 2014).