Blackberry Heaven: A Novel in Stories

The novel opens in fragments at a market in Amsterdam, among a fruit seller and a fishmonger, and drifts into imaginary landscapes until a mother's voice explains the key: always keep a kaleidoscope in your pocket. Scenes then turn like the toy itself, back to a childhood in the Styrian countryside, with a new parish priest, socialist rituals and household appliances smuggled from Austria, and forward to a young woman's life as a babysitter in Amsterdam on the night of a power cut. A second part moves to people from the Slovene Littoral, one of whom is waiting at an airport for his granddaughter during the same blackout, and the stories mirror and repeat each other in a circle.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

271 pages in the original

Set in

Netherlands, Slovenia

First published

2007 by Javni sklad Republike Slovenije za kulturne dejavnosti

Author's age

24 when first published

ISBN

9789616141581 (original)

9789616995665 (Slovene Writers' Association, Slovenia)