Kurji pastir

The first part of an autobiographical trilogy opens in 1959 in Dolenci, a village in Goričko, the hilly part of Prekmurje close to the Hungarian border, where the family's cottage is the poorest around. Trejzka, already thirty-nine, gives birth to an unexpected second child while her husband Pištek, forty-four, is away at his job as a road mender; neighbours help her. It is a boy, and a doubt planted about his paternity is dramatically dispelled. For a while he has no name, until the priest gives him "such a manly name", Feri. His sister, Little Trejzka, is eighteen and leaves that year for a factory in Ljubljana. In the inn the men agree that with no other livestock in the house the boy can never be more than a herder of hens, while honest Pištek believes only schooling can get a man out of the muck.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

297 pages in the original

Genres

Autofiction, Family, Coming of age (assigned by AI)

Set in

Slovenia, 1950s–1960s

Series

Kurji pastir, book 1 · book 3: Kurja fizika

First published

2020 by Beletrina

Author's age

61 when first published

ISBN

9789612846367 (original)