Name: Petelinje jajce
Price: 24 EUR
Availability: InStock
Rating: 5.0000 (9 reviews)
ISBN: 9789612849054

Cockerel’s Egg

Petelinje jajce

Feri Lainšček

Genre:: Novel
Year of publication:: 2023
Number of pages:: 356
Rights available:: world
Available reading materials:: English sample translation

Following the best-selling A Herder of Hens, the first installment in a thematic trilogy-to-be of stand-alones, Cockerel’s Egg explores Fêrek’s early boyhood. In these magical years before the start of school, the boy asks himself some of life’s biggest questions, in the face of which even adults are confused. His inquisitiveness and daydreaming make his mother, Trejzka, uneasy. In their out-of-the-way Prekmurje village, he will be branded as “strange” because of his fertile imagination. Although: who isn’t a little bit strange in this backwater settlement beside the Hungarian border? Trejzka herself, pious and humble, who takes her son to a gypsy woman for help? The irascible, but proud and hard-working road mender Pištek, who takes the boy with him to work? Or maybe the stubborn cockerel that does not wish to incubate eggs? These figures, taken from the writer’s own life, are so convincing, entertaining, and striking that the reader will feel they really know them. Yet all around our cast of unforgettable characters there lurks a faceless fear, one which Fêrek wishes to defy in any way possible.

Cockerel's Egg is an excellent stand-alone continuation of the novel A Herder of Hens, which in 2021 was Beletrina’s best-selling book and was also shortlisted for the illustrious Kresnik Award for best novel of the year. The author thematises his childhood in an original way, following the boy’s life in the years before he starts school. His magical experiencing of the world and his dogged pursuit of answers to the first existential questions are described through the poetic language for which the author is celebrated, creating a symbolically profound text. The elements of magic realism characteristic of Lainšček’s best novels are particularly striking here. Unique strands of the archaic and the fairy-tale, of Christian mythology and Communist ideology, as well as unusual elements of everyday life are woven together into an evocative text that speaks to us not only as a contribution to the author’s biography, but also as a literary masterpiece.

“Now I understand why God is always sad,” he whispered. “Nothing is as he imagined it,” he explained. “No soul wants to return to him, they would all rather stay here…”

A quirky, literarily imaginative piece of writing with an unmistakable Lainšček touch.

Bukla
The lyrical reverie and somewhat melancholic undertone of the narrative, in contrast to today’s time of hatred and intolerance, is animated by the value of love and respect for everyone. Lainšček’s Cockerel’s Egg conveys a message of joie de vivre and hope.

Radio Slovenia