• Publisher: Beletrina
• 132 pages
• Author: Marko Sosič
• Original title: Balerina, balerina

Ballerina is fifteen years old. She lives with her mother, father, and brother in a small village. She loves watching the chestnut tree in their backyard be- cause of the birds sleeping in its branches. She is fond of singing and is hap- py when her friend Ivan visits. But sometimes she breaks plates and glasses. And every morning she wets the bed. Ballerina is different from her peers. The short novel Ballerina, Ballerina is set in the 1960s, a period of great leaps and advances for humanity. But to Ballerina, who earned her nickname from a tendency to stand on tiptoes when distressed, the relationships be- tween those closest to her, the light of the day and the dark of the night, the changing of the seasons and her dreams are far more important than the news that the first person has walked on the moon or the war in Vietnam has begun. Although her view of the world can seem narrow, it may be that (perhaps precisely because of that) it is much more attuned to what really mat- ters in life. Drawing comparison to William Faulkner in its expressionistic depiction of Ballerina’s interior world, this is a classic of contemporary Slovenian literature: a hugely popular exploration of a character whose world is so divorced from what we think of as reality.

About the author

Marko Sosič

Marko Sosič (1958-2021) was a theatre and film director as well as novelist and short story writer, born in Trieste, Italy. He worked for various Slovenian and Italian theatres and television stations and started publishing fiction in the late 1980s. He wrote four novels and two short story collections. His work has been honoured with a string of literary and theatre awards, and he has been translated into several languages.