
In Elvis’s Room
ABOUT
THE BOOK
Sebastijan Pregelj’s award-winning novel, In Elvis’s Room, tells the turbulent story of Slovenian independence from the perspective of Jan, an only child growing up in Ljubljana. Jan’s life in 1980s Yugoslavia is filled with family outings, Star Wars, and good friends. But as he gets older, and the ties that have held together Yugoslavia begin to tatter, the contours of life change.
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
In Elvis’ s room is an exceptionally well-written novel about a boy growing up in Ljubljana in early eighties and through a personal and turbulent narrative convincingly portrays the independence of our country. Through Jan’s world, Pregelj revived the era that he describes very precisely – the text is imbued with many details of that time – the arrival of color televisions, Tito’s death, the first washing machines with a centrifuge, films and music, the plane crash in Corsica, the Sarajevo Olympics and the concurrent political conditions. The center of the novel is Elvis’s room – the childhood room of Jan’ s classmate, where Jan is confronted with a different culture and experiences many intimate turning points. A room where “everything was fine and right”, until the war cut into the lives of all the characters in the novel with the disintegration of the country and many intimate tragedies. The novel In In Elvis’ room received the Cankar Award for the best original literary work in the Slovenian language. (Mariborska knjižnica) The novel captivates us with its subtle intertwining of Jan’s coming-of-age and gradual loss of innocence with the historical transformations during the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the birth of a new state. The author skillfully uses historical moments, presenting them through the perspectives of ordinary people shaped by these events. Particularly notable is Jan’s escape into the world of imagination, which serves as a means of understanding and coping with reality, vividly depicting the inner worlds of the characters and highlighting the therapeutic value of storytelling. This multi-layered narrative approach, along with deeply developed characters, compels readers to reflect on historical events personally. The author’s decision to leave interpretation to the reader adds complexity to the work. Pregelj’s genuine characters create a mosaic of authentic life experiences, elevating the novel to a literary masterpiece, worthy of a DLA award nomination. (Ljubljana City Library (Mestna knjižnica Ljubljana)