• Publisher: *cf.
• 213 pages
• Author: Gašper Kralj
• Original title: Rok trajanja

The protagonist has no name. What he does have, however, is a somewhat unusual job – and a rather uncommon approach to it as well. He is a palliative caregiver, who efficiently – perhaps even too efficiently – looks after the dying. He writes a diary to alleviate the anxiety that he experiences at work and, especially, after work. And to avoid forgetting. When he has work – that is, when people around him are dying – he seems to have things more or less under control. When he has no work, his world seems to be slowly falling apart. His habitual meetings with his drinking buddies and his partner Katarina are becoming increasingly short. He is running away, running around to the point of exhaustion, or hiding somewhere. He is increasingly desperate trying to find an alibi for his criminal acts, which may or may not be that, and becoming increasingly lonelier trying to incriminate his friends, who might be precisely that. Questions of death, suicide, homicide, euthanasia, and guilt are thus skilfully sutured into the caregiver’s paranoid inner world.

About the author

Gašper Kralj

Gašper Kralj (1973) is a social anthropologist, translator and award-winning writer. He spent several years in Catalonia, where he translated Spanish-speaking authors (Javier Cercas, Eduardo Galeano, Ernesto Sábato, Carlos G. Villa) and worked on his debut novel Expiry Date (→ see page 37), which earned him a nomination for the best literary debut and the Kresnik Award shortlist. His second novel Stubs (→ see page 36) won the 2021 Cankar Award for the best original literary work of the previous year. Stubs was also shortlisted for the European Union Prize for Literature (EUPL) and the Kresnik Award. He is also a member of the Slovenian writers’ delegation that will be presented in October 2023 at Frankfurter Buchmesse 2023.