The newcomers
The Newcomers ( Slovenian : Prišleki ) is a novel by Lojze Kovačič . The work is an autobiographical trilogy that first appeared in Slovenia in 1984/85 . In the German edition, the work is also referred to as "a chronicle" in the subtitle.
content
In Volume I , Kovačič tells of the forced eviction of his family from Switzerland in 1938 , of their journey by train from Basel , where their father emigrated as a furrier, back to Ljubljana , Slovenia , and of their experiences of rejection and rejection as foreigners in their country of origin dad's. At first the family lived with relatives in the country, then in Ljubljana. From the perspective of a boy and with the watchful eye of an outsider, Kovacic describes his family's futile efforts to gain a foothold in his father's new old homeland, his efforts to learn the Slovene language, which is foreign to him, and the change from the pre-war to the war period the occupation of Ljubljana by Mussolini's troops in 1941 as the end of an era.
In Volume II , Kovačič writes about the occupation of Slovenia by Italian and German troops. He was forced into the Hitler Youth and his mother was rejected by the Slovenes as a "German". Ljubljana, cheered by King Peter, surrenders to the Italian occupation forces. The family stands in between, where does it belong? The youthful Lojze admires the partisans and the domobrances. In the middle of the war he began to draw, paint, read, try to write and join a circle of young Slovenian poets. After his father's death, at the age of 16, he wrote his first literary memorial text, which was published in a youth magazine. Then Ljubljana sinks into the chaos of the last days of the war.
The Volume III of the trilogy begins with the arrival of the guerrillas in the abandoned by the German troops Ljubljana and portrays the beginnings of socialist Yugoslavia to break of Tito with Stalin in 1948. In ever-changing scenes Kovačič describes the rush of joy, cowardice and Violence as a folk festival and how his family lives on in this mess, without a father driven by fear of being recognized as "German". At the age of just seventeen, he now bears sole responsibility for his mother and sister, who do not speak Slovenian, and the disabled niece in the cart, and sees himself in two worlds between which he cannot mediate. The relatives are pushed back and forth between the Yugoslav and Austrian borders for weeks and finally expelled. Full of self-reproach, he finds his way through Lijubljana, finds support through writing about the death and loss of his father, just like the attention of the literary scene, and as its outsider remains a chronicler of crazy times.
style
The style of the autobiographical work is a kind of inner monologue, which every now and then - separated by three points - is interrupted by scraps of thought.
reception
The work was enthusiastically celebrated by Slovenian and German-language literary critics as the 'novel of the 20th century' (for example, in 2001, Slovenian literary criticism chose its trilogy on the “novel of the 20th century”). For this novel he was referred to as the "Slovenian Proust". The NZZ also describes the novel as a masterpiece.
expenditure
- The newcomers . Klaus Detlef Olof, translator Drava-Verlag, 2004–2006, 3 volumes. Volume I: ISBN 978-3-85435-388-1 . Volume 2: ISBN 978-3-85435-443-7 . Volume III: ISBN 978-3-85435-444-4 .
- The newcomers . Klaus Detlef Olof, trans. Drava-Verlag, 2007, 1 volume. ISBN 3-85435-480-0 .