• Publisher: ŠKUC
• Author: Suzana Tratnik
• Original title: Igre z Greto

The protagonists of Suzana Tratnik’s short stories in Games with Greta all share a sense of isolation on society’s margins. Whether non-participants in the mainstream, rebels against it, or its occasional victims, they’re well practiced at recognizing the herd instinct in action. From the six-year-old girl who discovers transgressive new games to play with her glamorous cousin from England; to a decidedly unusual school- child inventing a novel way of getting back at playground bullies; to young women who find their love interests drifting away, seduced by conventional notions of popularity and success; to a narrator who suddenly finds herself on no ordinary train trip through the heart of Slovenia—these are characters and stories that deftly and sardonically underscore the phantom nature of “normalcy” itself and the risks of its tyranny for dissenters and conformists alike.

As Anna Blasiak wrote in her review in The Queer Riveter (2019): A dense, tense and intense collection of thirteen short stories dealing with heavy issues, from vio- lence, bullying, abuse and cruelty to social exclusion and homophobia, Games with Greta & Other Stories is a broken mirror, reflecting various aspects of life for queer women in Slovenian society, which, like most post-communist countries in Europe, seems still to be struggling with prejudice. /…? This is a very interesting collection: multifaceted, like life itself, mixing laughter with sexual desire, cruelty and violence with boredom, hunger for power with resignation; related by Tratnik with a certain bitterness and striking directness.

About the author

Suzana Tratnik

Suzana Tratnik (1963) has published seven collections of short stories: Pod ničlo (Below Zero, 1997), Na svojem dvorišču (In One’s Own Backyard, 2003), Vzporednice (Parallels, 2005), Česa nisem nikoli razumela na vlaku (Things I’ve Never Understood on the Train, 2008), Dva svetova (Two Worlds, 2010), Rezervat (Reservation, 2012), and Noben glas (No Voice, 2016), five novels: Ime mi je Damjan (My Name is Damian, 2001), Tretji svet (Third World, 2007), Tombola ali življenje! (Bingo or Life!, 2017), Norhavs na vrhu hriba (Madhouse on the Hilltop, 2019), Pontonski most (A Pontoon Bridge, 2020) and Ava (2021), a children’s picture book Zafuškana Ganca (The Hany Rattie, 2010) as well as a monodrama Ime mi je Damjan (My Name is Damian, 2002) and a radio play Lep dan še naprej (Have a Nice Day, 2012). She has also published four non-fiction books on the lesbian rights movement, literature and activism. In 2007 Tratnik received the national Prešeren Fund Award for Literature, in 2017 the Novo mesto Short Award for best short story collection, and in 2018 the Desetnica Award for best children’s or YA work. Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages.

The two central themes of Tratnik’s fiction are destinies of people living on the margin of today’s urban world and growing up in the 1960s and 1970s Yugoslavia.

A selection of Tratnik’s stories was published in the English translation in Games with Greta and Other Stories (Dalkey Archive Press, 2016).