By Mojca Kumerdj. Translated by Rawley Grau
ISBN: 978-1-908236-333
Winner of the 2017 Prešeren Award, the highest decoration in the field of artistic creation in Slovenia
Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2019
An epic, homourous and quite unique historical novel which looks at Central Europe in the 16th century – a territory plagued by ceaseless battles for supremacy between the Protestant political elite and the ruling Catholic Habsburg Monarchy, as well as the ongoing battle between the sexes. In Kumerdej’s wonderful saga, history and fiction intertwine in wavelike fashion, producing a colourful portrait of the Renaissance; permeated by humanist attempts to resurrect antiquity through art, new scientific findings, and spirited philosophical and theological debates.
Dublin Literary Award 2019, Librarian’s comments:
“The novel is a colourful portrait of Central Europe in the 16th century. It is convincing and authentic in the way it captures the spirit of that time, but what makes this book great is the language which changes with the narrator. You get the feeling that history is repeating itself only the ways of manipulation are different.”
“…this is a novel where centuries collide and collapse into each other, and behind the veil of the past we see our own century flickering, but whether as hope, doom, or simply illusion, it is impossible to say.”
– From the foreword by Rawley Grau
“… a historical novel in the most traditional sense of the word, where Brueghel meets Tom Jones, meets The Name of The Rose. The Harvest of Chronos is richly opulent, almost gossipy in period detail and vernacular atmosphere, with a tremendous emphasis on human voices, on the inner or outer workings of language and thought. The story looms alarming and chilling…”
Mika Provata-Carlone, Bookanista
