Evald Flisar – författare

“A world without truth would be an immensely sad place,” states the magistrate in the murder trial of local boy, Janek. A young man with serious mental issues, Janek weaves a ‘chestnut crown’ from the leaves of a supposedly sacred tree in a attempt to rid himself of the demons of the past through a pagan ceremony. The crown is later found on the body of the farmer Geder - stabbed to death with a bread knife. Through a series of flashbacks during the subsequent interrogations, we learn of Janek’s story: from the perversion of his relationship with his mother, to the frustrations of his love affair with Daria and his inability to complete his studies or free himself from the ghosts which haunt him. A Swarm of Dust is widely considered to be one of Flisar’s finest works of fiction, questioning the very notion of objective truth and subverting the norms of Judeo-Christian morality.

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.