Novel
U registraturi
Not translated into English
Ante Kovačić · 1888
Synopsis
In an archive room, dusty files quarrel with one another, and the Registry gives voice to the biography of the man who keeps them, Ivica Kičmanović. The son of peasants from the Zagorje, a gifted boy whom the priest and the schoolmaster have noticed, he is sent to study in the city. There he meets Laura, who will decide his fate, does not complete his studies and soon belongs neither to the village nor to the city. The narrative returns from time to time to the archive room, where we find the same man grown old.
Context
The novel appeared as a serial in the journal Vienac throughout 1888, and its author died the following year; the book was not printed in volume form until 1911, the critics of the time having been baffled by its composition. When it appeared, some found it sensational, others condemned it for its femme fatale, Laura. It draws heavily on the life of the man who wrote it, above all in the childhood of its hero, and even in the trade of registrar when the author went from one law office to another. Croatian critics describe it as a torso, badly fitted together, which mixes Romanticism, Realism and Naturalism. A television series was made from it in 1974, and the Gavella Theatre staged it in 2015.
Who it is for
A long novel, full of digressions, with no regular construction; the title refers to the room where an administration keeps its files. No French translation.
Prizes and reception
Regarded by Croatian critics as the summit of national realism and as the most impressive prose of the country in the second half of the nineteenth century.
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