Ana Schnabl – författare

Dunja, having finally gotten a little acclaim and money from her writing career, decides it's time to return home to the Adriatic coast and solve the mystery of her brother's death that set in motion the suicide of her father. Flood Tide is a sweeping exploration of the violence born from human ambivalences, limitations and decisions. It is as elegantly plotted and psychologically deft as a Ross Macdonald mystery, and has the idiosyncratic virtuosity of Fernanda Melchor's Hurricane Season.

The golden 1980s in the Socialist Yugoslavia were a curious time, a time when the country undoubtedly already began its descent into disintegration, but when the bloody years that would follow still seemed inconceivable. A time of unprecedented freedom of thought and travel; a time of dissident movements and heady music and literary scenes. And yet it was also a time when the state still had a tight grip on the lives of its citizens, not least through its security services and its web of informants. We enter the story in 1985, and meet Adam, a professor of literature at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana who is trying his hand at writing again. Ana is the editor who receives his manuscript, ‘The Masterpiece’. The protagonists soon cross the lines of their professional relationship and become entangled in an intense, adulterous affair. But Adam moves in dissident circles and Ana owes her position as the youngest editor in the history of the biggest state publishing house to her cooperation with the dark side of the government.

Ein radikales Debüt, das unsere Sehnsüchte, Begehrlichkeiten, Freuden und Ängste spiegelt.Ana Schnabl hält in ihren raffinierten Erzählungen auf ganz ungewöhnliche Weise menschliche Beziehungen fest. Da ist die verstörende Unruhe einer Frau in der Warteschlange einer Apotheke, oder die junge Mutter, die um die Aufmerksamkeit ihres Mannes ringt, doch keine Liebe für ihr Neugeborenes empfindet, oder das Mädchen, das jede Regung ihrer strahlenden Zwillingsschwester studiert wie die eines seltenen Insekts unter dem Vergrößerungsglas. Die Geschichten berühren mit unerwarteter Heftigkeit und erlauben einen ganz anderen Blick auf den Menschen. Dieses preisgekrönte Debüt zeigt eine junge slowenische Autorin bereits jetzt auf höchstem sprachlichen Niveau – ein großes Versprechen für die Zukunft.