Northern Light - Drago Jančar

On the 40th anniversary of its releaseNorthern Lights, a bold and penetrating novelDear Jančar, one of the most awarded, established and translated Slovenian authors, who also received the Austrian State Prize for European Literature for his work in 2020, is now in a fresh reprint. The author adds: "I am delighted with the new edition of this novel and I am very interested in whether it can still tell today's reader something. Perhaps, in the face of the dark clouds that are gathering over Europe again today, someone will feel the anxiety of my hero, whose ground is giving way under his feet. Perhaps someone will be moved or even shaken by the impossible love story that unfolds in a town on the border. In a time of growing social conflicts and invisibly present and threatening violence. Anyone can get off the train somewhere and their life will completely change." The novel depicts the city of Maribor at the beginning of 1938, i.e. immediately before the start of World War II. Josef Erdman travels there for business reasons, waiting for a meeting, while the terra incognita increasingly sucks him in like a kind of trap. He wanders from the newsstand by the bridge to the limping postwoman who delivers the telegram to her, drinks with the "man of God" Fedjatin and Ivan Glavina, "a real rascal", and also has to get close to the unusually beautiful Margarita Samsa. Not only him, but also others feel the ground tilting under their feet, and it seems that they might level out again if they just drink enough. In the confusion, some try to orient themselves by clinging to new scientific findings and judging their fellow man by the shape of his skull. In this harsh environment, love also comes to life, a unique, swirling force, but it does not look its best - like this, in a harlequin costume in the middle of the crumbling Abyssinian barracks. A true novel for all times.