• Publisher: Beletrina
• 352 pages
• Author: Drago Jančar
• Original title: In ljubezen tudi

After the occupation of Yugoslavia by German forces in 1941, the Slovenian city of Maribor, historically a German-speaking town with a large German minority, is annexed to the Third Reich. In the city renamed Marburg an der Drau, neighbours and friends are torn apart and a resistance movement is organised in the surrounding hills.

The three characters at the heart of the novel, Valentin, a partisan resistance fighter, his girlfriend Sonja, and the SS officer Ludwig, once called Ludek, each try in their own way to defend their love from the senselessness of evil and the downfall of human dignity. The war upsets their perceptions of the

world and of themselves and inevi- tably breaks their lives apart.

And Love Itself, the title taken from Lord Byron’s So We’ll Go No More a Roving, is an astonishing tale of the will and resilience of the human spirit, set against the backdrop of historical coincidences and trage- dy. Jančar poses complex questions and exposes the essential dilemmas faced by mod ern man, all in his characteristic expansive style, in- terspersed with extraordinary lyri- cal inserts.

About the author

Drago Jančar

As a novelist, short-story writer, playwright, and essayist, Drago Jančar (1948) is a central figure in contemporary Slovenian literature. His writing has revealed an artistic ability to formulate and express ideas that reach far beyond the spiritual and cultural sphere of his native country, making him the most translated Slovenian writer ever. His novels, essays and short stories have been translated into 33 languages and published in Europe, Asia and the Americas. His dramas have also been staged by a number of foreign theatres, while at home they are frequently considered the highlights of the Slovenian theatri- cal season.