Tony Fabijančić - Böcker

Anamorphic Distortion in Literature, Visual Art and Film explores four key types of anamorphic distortion in media across several centuries.Every work of art that involves anamorphosis invites the viewer or reader to decrypt its distortional elements, resolve confusion and seek understanding, creating a balance between disruption and wholeness. To do this with the works examined — ranging from Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors to Hamlet to Mulholland Drive — this book favours close, almost archaeological readings of works instead of analyses relying primarily on hegemonic critical theory, which often imposes external meanings and focuses on uncovering flaws or hidden ideologies. The author resists theoretical critique's invasive tendency towards negativity and disconfirmation bias — interpreting texts based on preconceived assumptions, often ignoring what genuinely draws people to art and literature. While the search for "the secret perspective" might seem similar to theoretical critique, this book is set apart by its method of emphasizing the discovery of anamorphic elements from within the work itself and by its selective use of theory. The goal is an open, nuanced, stereoscopic analysis of anamorphosis across time.Anamorphic Distortion in Literature, Visual Art and Film is intended for scholars, students and general readers of art and the history of ideas in the humanities.

Since childhood, Tony Fabijančić has travelled frequently to Yugoslavia and Croatia, the homeland of his father. He spent time with his peasant family in the village of Srebrnjak in the north and escaped to the Adriatic islands in the south where he could break free from the constraints of everyday life. Those two worlds – the north, marked by the haunting saga of family life, its history and material practices, and the south, a place defined by travel and escape – formed the two halves of Fabijančić's Croatian life. Over time, he observed Srebrnjak become a white-collar weekend retreat, the community of peasants of the 1970s, to which he was first introduced, only a distant memory. From the continental interior of green valleys and plum orchards to the austere and skeletal karst coast, Drink in the Summer is a unique record of a place and people now lost to time, a description of a country's varied landscapes, and a journey of discovery, freedom, beauty, and love.