Novel
Čangi off Gottoff
Not translated into English
Alojz Majetić · 1970
Synopsis
Zagreb. Čangi, a city hoodlum, and his gang, Lily, Žu, Degy and Gnjuso, spend their nights partying, with vermouth and jazz, games and love affairs with no tomorrow. After a few adventures, to avoid a heavier sentence, he agrees to go and mend his ways on a youth voluntary work site, and discovers that people get by there just as they do elsewhere.
Context
The book first appeared in Novi Sad in 1963 under the title Čangi, the year a collection of the author's poems was banned. A thousand copies sold quickly, then the novel was prosecuted for pornography and for a false presentation of young people, and withdrawn from sale; critics reproached it above all for its portrayal of the voluntary work camps. In 1970, the climate having changed, the author brought out from Znanje, in the HIT series, a revised and expanded version, which reproduces press articles about the trial.
Who it is for
More than three hundred pages in the 1970 edition, written in the slang of Zagreb, anglicisms and coined words included. No French translation.
Prizes and reception
A cult book of Croatian jeans prose, and the first book of the Yugoslav post-war period to have had its own trial.
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