Out of order

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.

Out of Order is a collection of 14 short stories not connected to each other regarding their order but very much Connected in terms of contents, issues and their typical anti-hero of this century. Through Aleš Čar’s short stories we meet urban population of Ljubljana being totally lost in their business and private relations. His characters are in their early thirties somewhere between student life and independence, trying to rebuild their old relationships or find new and happier ones. The cruel, but at the same time, sympathetic narrator very realistically shows the deterioration of long-time relationships and marriages, relations with children, sex, alcohol and sedatives addiction, depressions and financial problems. His modern anti-heroes are striving for safety and luck being disabled to achieve it by their tragic everyday life and the remains of transition. At the end of every story they remain all alone with even more bitterness and fuzziness. They are determined by passiveness and everyday routines but can do only very little or nothing against it. Very critically 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. It is a brilliant, interesting and splendidly constructed short story collection which you are going to read with great pleasure.

Share

In my opinion, this is shortphrose culmination of our literary season.

Urban Vovk | Literatura

In Out of Order there is excellent, extremely good writing, which expandes enormous amount of reading pleasure to a reading public, but at the same time, this is hard, self-centered and therefore challenging material, which for already mentioned action (for many) requires enormous favour: a disciplined reader.

Daniel Vončina | Mladina

Čar`s stories are based on a thoughtful scheme of links between the atmosphere of the starting point, an accurate outline of the area, increasing tension and uncertainty of the conflict with the perception of mental imbalance, resulting in mutual contact (or breaking contact) and in a surprising, even ambiguous or simply transferred plant and metaphor ending, bitter, mocking or grotesque point.

Helga Glušić | Delo

Meet The Author

Aleš Čar

MadeInSlovenia

Made in Slovenia

By

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.

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.