Love Novel - (Biblioasis International Translation) by Ivana Sajko (Paperback)

About the Book

"Love in late capitalism: Ivana Sajko takes us to the frontlines of a war waged between kitchen and bedroom. He, an unemployed Dante scholar, trying to change the world and write a novel. She, once a passable actress with a vaguely rewarding theater job, now a stay-at-home mom. He is delirious with dreams of grandeur; she is on edge, a detonator bomb with a dirty laundry trigger. The rent is late, the neighbor caviling, the government astoundingly callous: with violence looming on all sides, husband and wife circle one another in a dizzying dance towards the abyss"--

Book Synopsis

Winner of the HKW Internationaler Literaturpreis - Shortlisted for the 2023 Dublin Literary Award - One of The Millions Most Anticipated Titles of 2024 - One of Kirkus Reviews' Twenty Books You Can Read in a Weekend - One of the Boston Globe's Anticipated Forthcoming Titles - An American Bookseller's Association Indie Next Pick

Love in late capitalism: Ivana Sajko takes us to the frontlines of a war waged between kitchen and bedroom.

Love in late capitalism: in an unnamed city, a husband and wife wage a silent war of rage and resentment. He, an out-of-work Dante scholar, is trying to change the world--and write a novel. She was once a passable actress, but now she's failing at breastfeeding. They take on gigs and debts. He drinks cheap wine; she cleans obsessively. In their two-room flat the tension rises and turns exquisite: the rent is past due, their careers have stalled, the regime is crumbling, and there's always the baby, the baby who won't stop crying.

Intense and astutely ironic, devastating and darkly comic, Ivana Sajko's Love Novel takes a scalpel to the heart of modern married life.

Review Quotes

Praise for Love Novel

"Sajko takes no prisoners . . . [Love Novel] gloriously marries sociopolitical commentary on failed capitalism in a failed state to the inevitability of failed marriage, locating the narrative in an extraordinary violence of mind and body . . . Matching form with content, it depicts lives that involve walking constantly on tightropes with a ferocity of prose that allows no breathing space, consummately conveying the claustrophobic existence of the characters as external as well as personal circumstances close in on them."
--Dublin Literary Award Judges' Citation

"A devastating book, humane, original, and deeply relevant."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A work of startling and brass originality. Sajko never shies away from the broken and crass aspects of being in love. But within this writing, moments of grace and absolute beauty shine through. Moments as exquisite as the first falling snowflakes that stop you in your tracks."

--Heather O'Neill, author of When We Lost Our Heads

"[Sajko's] sentences mimic how, in the heat of argument, thoughts converge, events conflate, and emotions surge until one forgets where it all began . . ."
--Literary Review of Canada

"Love Novel is not a comfortable read, but it is a timely exploration of socio-economic inequality, a raw confrontation of the pain humans are capable of inflicting on one another, and a fearless engagement with the challenges of poverty and parenthood."
--Helen Vassallo, Reading in Translation

"Sajko's taut, innovative writing has a pounding tempo; she unleashes a stream of consciousness that combines all the hopes, regrets and resentments competing in the minds of her characters . . . Every word has been chosen carefully."
--Harriet Zaidman, Winnipeg Free Press

"A necessary read . . . brief yet intricate, raw but profoundly touching."
--Anne Smith-Nochasak, The Miramichi Reader

"The true love story in this novel is the love between the reader and the characters, asking the reader to sympathize with the flawed, struggling characters . . . reminding them that some relationships are too interwoven to be truly cut apart."
--Alex Carrigan, The /temz/ Review

"A sharp and claustrophobic portrait of a fraying marriage . . . Sajko never takes her foot off the gas in this potent and incendiary outing."
--Publisher's Weekly

"Love Novel is a universal story about passion and poverty that's told in rich language."
--Suzanne Kamata, Foreword Reviews

"In its depiction of a contemporary relationship submitted to the meatgrinder of contemporary demands and expectations, Love Novel is unafraid and unsparing in its honesty."
--Andrew Hood, Bookshelf.ca

"The interpersonal magic now lost, or at least forgotten, but above all: poisoned by the big bad world 'out there.' Ivana Sajko celebrates this sad state of affairs with power and intensity."
--NDR Kultur

"Breathless, barely punctuated. Her heroes: a nameless couple in a Mediterranean nowhere, devoted to each other in hate. A tough, great novel."
--Neue Presse

"A brilliant novel: intense and poetic, exhilarating and devastating."
--Priya Basil, author of Ishq and Mushq

About the Author

Ivana Sajko is a writer, theatre director, and performer working in the overlapping fields of literature, performance art and music. The author of four acclaimed novels and dozens of political theatre pieces, among which Woman-bomb gained international success, she is the four-time winner of a national playwriting award as well as the French Chevalier Medal of Arts and Letters, the Ivan Goran Kovačic Prize for best debut novel, and Internationales Literaturpreis. A contributor to Die Zeit, she lives in Berlin with her son.

Mima Simic is a writer, film critic, translator, and LGBTIQ+ activist. She holds degrees in comparative literature, English language and literature, and gender studies, and was Croatia's first openly LGBTIQ+ political candidate.