In Elvis's Room

A first-person account of growing up in Ljubljana in the last decades of the twentieth century. We follow Jan from his seventh birthday to his student years: family life as an only child, visits from relatives, school, bullying, friendships, sexual awakening and the search for his own path. The backdrop is the multicultural Ljubljana of socialist Yugoslavia, which in the last chapters becomes the capital of a new state, recreated in detail, from the first colour televisions and Tito's death to the Sarajevo Olympics and service in the Yugoslav army, while the political situation surfaces in the adults' conversations. At the heart of the novel is Elvis's room, the bedroom of Jan's classmate, where everything was "all right and as it should be", unlike after the war and the break-up of the country cut into all their lives.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

351 pages in the original

Genres

Coming of age, War (assigned by AI)

Set in

Slovenia, 1970s–1990s

First published

2019 by Goga

Author's age

49 when first published

ISBN

9789612772178 (original)

9789533514741 (Sandorf Passage, United States)