The Slovene Book Fair ended today with Boris A Novak winning the Book of the Year Award for this latest collection of poems, Bivališča duš, part of his 20-year, three-volume series Vrata nepovrata, which also includes Zemljevidi domotožja and Čas očetov. A true epic that contains some 43,000 verses on 2,300 pages, there’s sadly only one of Novak’s works on Amazon, although he does appear in some translated anthologies.
Novak talks with RTV Slovenia about the challenges of this work (full video)
The books that Novak beat for the award’s shortlist included Miha Blažič for Samoumevni svet, Tomaž Šalamun and Metka Kraševec for Šepetanje, Noah Charney for Večni arhitekt: Življenje in delo Jožeta Plečnika (also available in English), and Črt Poglajen for Skozi oči prekariata.
