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 relataThe novel Balerina, balerina – Ballerina, Ballerina is a first person narrative of a girl, later on a woman whose soul has been wounded. Her understanding of the world is limited, moreover she relives it through the eyes and words of adults. Foremostely, through the eyes of her mother Ivanka, her brother Karl, her friend Ivan who used to believe that he would become a doctor and cure her, all the way to a village postman and a series of other characters who at the end of the 1960s at the Carst of Trieste come close to her frail being. Balerina does not distinguish dreams from reality, both dimmensions melt into a uniform whole presenting her truth of the life and world. Umrl je leta 2021.onships 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.
