by Evald Flisar
Translated from the Slovene by David Limon
IBSN: 9781912545537
Publication: 11 March, 2025
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.
“A master prosaist capable of luring the reader into the most psychologically complex of tales, Flisar’s books can seem at first simplistic and familiar, only to break out in unexpected ways. The late critic Eileen Battersby summed it nicely in her review of his novel, My Father’s Dreams: ‘Flisar . . . has an individual approach to narrative. Logic does not interest him; human behaviour at the mercy of a damaged psyche is his chosen theme.’ Now, at the grand age of eighty, it seems that he has smoothed his edges and produced an all-encompassing work of fiction that dissects writing’s relationship to his own ‘damaged psyche’. Indeed, My Kingdom is Dying is a quiet masterpiece of the type that his fictional persona constantly dreams about, and in reading, one cannot help but reflect on one’s own expectations of fiction: is it as entertainment or guidance, a show of cleverness or a revelatory potential?” Asymptote Journal
“This charming and slyly subversive novel is a celebration of the power of storytelling, formally and informally. The unnamed protagonist is a highly respected novelist and short story writer who, like Flisar himself, has travelled widely and lived and worked in both Slovenia and London. He is quite a quirky, at times even arrogant, character whose life story, as he tells it, has all the qualities of a sophisticated tall tale, one that is gleefully anachronistic, blending profound insights with absurd happenings, and blurring the line between possible fact and pure fantasy. . . In the end, despite—or perhaps because of—its many spirited and unlikely detours, My Kingdom is Dying is a tribute to storytelling so rich with literary illusions and intertextual elements that it holds a depth its seemingly light, eccentric tone belies.” Roughghosts
