MY KINGDOM IS DYING
Evald Flisar
Translated by David Limon
When the main character, a successful writer, experiences writer’s block, he withdraws from his malign fate to Berghof, a Swiss clinic. A number of famous names in world literature are already receiving treatment there, from Martin Amis, Graham Greene and Saul Bellow to J. M. Coetzee. But is Berghof really what it purports to be? And what role does the ever-silent figure of Scheherazade play in the novel? My Kingdom is Dying is not just a hybrid of the genres of confession – detective story, memoir and fictional biography – but also a unique combination of fiction and metafiction, literature and meta-literary reflection. Readers follow a gripping story in which unusual events unobtrusively mingle with meaningful reflection and deep insights.
Istros Books (publisher’s description)
About the Author & Translator
Evald Flisar, born 1945 in Gerlinci, then Yugoslavia now Slovenia, is the most widely translated Slovenian author and playwright (270 translations in 42 languages), with stage and radio plays produced in 36 countries, former editor of an encyclopaedia of science in London, president of the Slovene Writers’ Association (1995−2002), since 1998 editor-in-chief of the oldest Slovenian literary magazine Sodobnost (Contemporary Review). Flisar has developed a unique, contemporary version of the bildungsroman. One of his most renowned novels, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (1986), belongs to this genre; it has been published in thirteen Slovenian editions and is recognised as the ‘most widely read Slovenian novel of the 20th century’. His novels in English include My Father’s Dreams (Istros, 2016), Three Loves, One Death (Peter Owen, 2024), Tea with the Queen (Texture Press, USA, 2015) and five more. Since 1995, he has lived in Ljubljana.
David Limon, who translated Evald Flisar’s My Kingdom is Dying into English, is a retired university professor and researcher of intercultural communication. As well as Evald Flisar, his literary translations from Slovene include novels by Drago Jančar, Boris Kolar, Andrej Skubic, Ana Schnabl and Mojca Širok, as well as short stories and other works by a range of writers.
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