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Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh By Slobodan Novak translated from the Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth
ISBN: 0975444468
ISBN13: 9780975444467
$16.95 US
Dispossessed of her vast property on the island of Rab by the Communist authorities of Yugoslavia, 100-year-old Madonna lies on her death bed. She is finicky, frail and foul-smelling, a "miracle of nature," according to the narrator Mali, because her body continues to function at all. Mali looks after her, patient and exasperated. His identity is never made clear. He may or may not be a relative. He stands to gain little or nothing when she passes on. He waits, performing his duty, remembering and reflecting on his life and the life of the island, his country. In the finely honed lyrical prose of a mid-20th-century masterpiece, Slobodan Novak explores family, religion, the individual, the state, duty, memory, and love in a manner reminiscent of Chekhov, Beckett, Borges and Kis. Madonna's passing is the passing of the way of life and thought of an entire age.
On its release in 1968, Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh received every major literary award available in the Yugoslavia of its day, including the Matica Hrvatska Prize for the best book of prose, the Vladimir Nazor Prize, the Nin Prize for the best novel, and the Vecernji List Critics' Prize. It has subsequently gone through nine editions in Croatia and been translated into six languages around the world. It has also been adapted to the stage (in 1974) and the screen (in 1971).
Original in Croatian
Mirisi, Zlato i Tamjan
1968
