Made in Slovenia

Made in Slovenia

Beletrina, 2007, 190 pages

Translation rights sold: Poland (Biblioteka Balkan), Serbia (Rende), Czech Republic (Duhapress), Macedonia (Magor)

In short story collection Made in Slovenia Aleš Čar did something that is very difficult to do – he caught Zeitgeist on three printed pages (which is the length of the stories), he caught daily routines into fiction starting with public news accessible to everyone and finishing with private worlds and little stories with an emphasis on the individuals and their destiny.

The short stories collection Made in Slovenia is sort of a logical continuation of Čar’s previous prose works, though at the same time it represents a new level in his op us. This is due to his circularly concluded concept with its own rules. Each story opens with a quote from the press in the year 2006 and that very quote serves as a trigger of the story, sort of recordings of the reality turning into fiction. This quotes are actually a simple local chronicle, Made in Slovenia chronicle, yet at the same time the chronicle of the present global moment we live in, regardless of our state borders. Čar is a great master of minimalism – as he proved with his previous works already – a writer who manages to write a complete story and build a complete world on a very small space.
Made in Slovenia collection shows an author who is the analytical eye of our time, a prosaic who very well knows what to do with this tragic reality impudently offering itself as literary topic and who very subtly, so to say filigree, builds the worlds of fiction that function also above it and goes much further than the quotes the stories grow out of. Čar is a master of wide range of emotions, tonalities and intensities; he simply knows how to write a witty story that is neither banal or tragic nor pathetic or grotesque, without crossing the border of good taste, realistically keeping the story functioning as good fiction. His writing is full of witty dialogs, convincing descriptions, suggestive atmosphere and urban language.

Share

Leaving Slovenian pathos aside or not, short stories of Aleš Čar present our small city without redundant sentimentality. They show a wide range of mentally different habitats, who despite their difference continually melt into collective picture of our time.

Maša Pfeifer | Airbeletrina

Made in Slovenia is a book which does not give any answers but if we listen carefully it does offer deepest existential questions. For this reason and due to its unique composition the book remains intriguing, open and up-to-date.

Tanja Petrič | Literatura

Meet The Author

Aleš Čar

9789612425203

Out of order

By

Beletrina, 2003, 168 pages

Two stories translated in English

Three stories translated in German

One story translated in Spanish

Translation rights sold: Poland (Wojciech Domachowski), Croatia (Fraktura)

Out of order is a shorty story collection with modern anti-heroes who are striving for safety and luck being disabled to achieve it by their tragic everyday life and the remains of transition. Very critical to characters. passiveness and addictions, Čar puts to question the status of young middle class population, their role in the urban city life as well as their resignation and unfulfilled emotional relationships.

OZnosnosti

On Tolerability

By

Beletrina, 2011, 257 pages

30-pages excerpt available in English

A novel of complex structure that portrays one family’s extensive saga, following four generations through a period of hundred years, scattered throughout Europe.