Name: Pontonski most
Price: 19 EUR
Availability: InStock
ISBN: 9789612846404

A Pontoon Bridge

Pontonski most

Suzana Tratnik

Read a Sample Chapter

Genre:: Novel
Year of publication:: 2020
Number of pages:: 284
Rights sold:: Germany (Konkursbuch Verlag)
Available reading materials:: German pdf, English sample translation

A Pontoon Bridge is set against the political backdrop of 1990s Slovenia, a time of political change in a newly independent country and a time of legitimation of hate speech against minorities. The novel tells the story of eternal student Jana, a young woman who lives on the existential edge. Though very well educated, Jana and her friends largely live on the margins – because of their sexual orientation, poverty or other differences – and some even fall over the edge. After a difficult breakup with drug addict Simi, Jana must face her demons and anxiety attacks all on her own. When she starts going to therapy, she begins to see her life as a pontoon bridge, provisional and temporary. Taking stock of her wild recent past, she tries to build and bring meaning to the present, although she keeps worrying how strong this bridge of hers really is. With fun times consigned to the past, Jana is acutely aware of her loneliness, both on a personal and social level. As she searches for her place in the world, she comes to realise that her circle of lesbian friends is the only community where she feels like herself.
A Pontoon Bridge is a radical book that features vivid and candid descriptions along with slang typical of the era, recalling the 1990s Slovenia that gave birth to the LGBT community and the alternative squat of Metelkova. A time when rave parties abounded and club life was imbued with activism and rebellion.

Suzana Tratnik often delights readers with her prose about people in search of themselves who are also somehow trapped in an unfriendly world. And she does this with self-irony and humour. A Pontoon Bridge is a metaphor for an interesting novelistic story about making your way through life – a story the writer fleshes out in various registers of the language.

TV Slovenija 1
[Tratnik's] heroine lives a somewhat unusual life, somewhat on the social margins, but when she finds herself going through an emotional crisis, she is very human. And the same is true of the writer’s narrative.

Radio Slovenia
A Pontoon Bridge is a novel about love, addiction, psychological disorders, and “growing up”, but it is also about the importance of a solid foundation for activist communities. This is a multi-layered work, which knows how to fully exploit its own literary resources: the choice of style is well grounded, works on a number of levels, and serves various purposes, while the novel’s themes are convincingly interlaced and honed with perception, understanding and care.

LUD Literatura
This is also a novel about the search for self and the fear of losing those who are dear to you, as well as the realisation that it might sometimes be good to lose them, because this might be the way they find themselves. […] No matter how much Jana and the others are at rock bottom, in the most complicated and difficult situations, no matter what burdens they might carry, they find time for sometimes playful, sometimes very dark humour, and discover bits of wisdom and life truths that touch the reader or open a new horizon, even if that horizon may be invisible to the particular world the novel deals with, or alien to the reader.

Vestnik MS

Also by Suzana Tratnik

No Voice

Noben glas

Suzana Tratnik

Find out more

Interested in finding out more about this title?

Write to us here and a member of our foreign rights team will get back to you as soon as possible.

Related news

Three Beletrina Authors at Leipzig Book Fair