A Chronicle of Forgetting
ABOUT
THE BOOK
Every morning the memories are a little different. The world of Sebastijan Pregelj’s novel A Chronicle of Forgetting is governed by dementia. In his previous novels and stories Pregelj has taken us to incredible, fantastic worlds, to worlds of the past, and once even into space, but the most incredible world is the world hidden in the human brain. Here, he gives us a remarkable, deeply humanistic story about pondering life and looking for meaning, for that happiness which we do not know how to find in the privileged part of the world and which people from other continents would like to have, but most of all this is a novel about accepting the end of life. It speaks of last things with a light that inspires and awakens. Pregelj is a writer with a keen ear for a story, for structuring plot, for gradual intensification, and for unexpected, sometimes extremely minute, but never unimportant reversals. He confirms anew that he is in command of his craft and one of Slovenia’s finest writers.
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Rawley
Grau
Rawley Grau has translated numerous works from Slovenian, including novels by Dušan Šarotar, Mojca Kumerdej, Gabriela Babnik, and Sebastijan Pregelj. Five of his translations, including Pregelj’s A Chronicle of Forgetting, have been longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award, and his translations of Šarotar’s Panorama and Billiards at the Hotel Dobray were shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize. In 2021, he received the Lavrin Diploma for excellence in translation from the Association of Slovenian Literary Translators. Originally from Baltimore, he has lived in Ljubljana since the early 2000s.
Rawley Grau has translated numerous works from Slovenian, including novels by Dušan Šarotar, Mojca Kumerdej, Gabriela Babnik, and Sebastijan Pregelj. Five of his translations, including Pregelj’s A Chronicle of Forgetting, have been longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award, and his translations of Šarotar’s Panorama and Billiards at the Hotel Dobray were shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize. In 2021, he received the Lavrin Diploma for excellence in translation from the Association of Slovenian Literary Translators. Originally from Baltimore, he has lived in Ljubljana since the early 2000s.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
The novel is a moving, well written – and translated – story about finding meaning and accepting the end of life, about losing memories and doing things worth remembering, about leaving something behind for others to find hope and/or comfort in. As it increasingly becomes the protagonist’s one true anchor in his diminishing sense of reality and self, the simple beauty of the world surrounding him is described in the novel’s most poetic language. Ljubljana City Library, Slovenia