A Chronicle of Forgetting

Every morning the memories are a little different. The world of Sebastijan Pregelj's novel A Chronicle of Forgetting is governed by dementia. In his previous novels and stories Pregelj has taken us to incredible, fantastic worlds, to worlds of the past, and once even into space, but the most incredible world is the world hidden in the human brain. Here, he gives us a remarkable, deeply humanistic story about pondering life and looking for meaning, for that happiness which we do not know how to find in the privileged part of the world and which people from other continents would like to have, but most of all this is a novel about accepting the end of life. It speaks of last things with a light that inspires and awakens. Pregelj is a writer with a keen ear for a story, for structuring plot, for gradual intensification, and for unexpected, sometimes extremely minute, but never unimportant reversals. He confirms anew that he is in command of his craft and one of Slovenia's finest writers.



The Slovene writer Sebastijan Pregelj was born in Ljubljana in 1970 and studied history at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana. In the 1990s, he began writing short stories, which appeared in various literary magazines. In addition to four short story collections, he has published six novels: Leta milosti (Years of Mercy, 2004), Na terasi babilonskega stolpa (On the Terrace of the Tower of Babel, 2008), Mož, ki je jahal tigra (The Man Who Rode a Tiger, 2010), Pod srečno zvezdo (Under a Lucky Star, 2013), Kronika pozabljanja (A Chronicle of Forgetting, 2014), Vdih. Izdih. (Breathe In. Breathe Out, 2017), and, most recently, V Elvisovi sobi (Dear Ali. Dear Elvis, 2019). He also writes books for children. Four of his novels have been nominated for the Kresnik Award for Best Slovene Novel, and his stories have appeared in anthologies in German, Czech, Polish, and English. Three of his novels have been published by the Drava Verlag (Klagenfurt, Austria) in Erwin Köstler's German translation: Auf der Terrasse des Turms von Babel (2013), Unter einem glücklichen Stern (2015), and Chronik des Vergessens (2017). He is co-author, with Gašper Troha, of the guide Ljubljana Literary Trail, which exists in both English and Slovene. Pregelj lives and works in Ljubljana and is a member of the Slovene Writers' Association.



Contents

Part 1

An Unusual Assembly 11

Part 2

Memories Are Just a Game

Mostly a Harmless One 21

All the Windows in My Life Have Faced East 29

The Empty Bench Will Always Remind Me

of a Man I Had Nothing to Do With 35

That Other World Is Becoming More

and More Like This One 42

Before I Forget Who I Am

Grey Clouds Cover the Sun 51

On the Safe Side 57

If I Could Live Life Over from the Beginning 64

The Silence That Comes from the Flat Next Door

Is Calming 73

Here with Me 79

So Long as You're Willing to Act a Little

and Use Your Old Tricks 82

For a Moment I Feel Satisfaction

and a Sweet Tingling Sensation 88

Ultimately, We Are All Apostles 92

Every Night I Wake Up Covered

in Sweat and Piss 100

Border Watch Means Nobody Gets Past Alive 104

Aida Saw Him and I Understand Everything 118

You Said That Courage Was the Answer 127

6

Sebastijan Pregelj

Part 3

We Are Content, We Are Happy 133

You Should Leave When People Still Know

Who You Are 143

The Flower Garden 149

The Black Horse 158

I Look at the Light Falling Through the Window 169

Stardust 173

Part 4

You Are Life As It Is 177

Tanja Petrič

The Harmless Game of Memories

and What It Can Lead To 179

Sebastijan Pregelj: Selected Bibliography 189

Litteræ Slovenicæ 1991–2019 193