"Zletka" by Maja Hrgovic (2012, translated from Croatian)

Information on Women in Translation Month - August, 2017

Works I have read so far for Women In Translation Month - August, 2017

1.  "Happy New Year" by Ajaat Cour - Translated from Punjabi

2. "The Floating Forest" by Natsuo Kirino- Translated from Japanese

3. " A Home Near the Sea" by Kamala Das - Translated from Malayalam

4. "Maria" by Dacia Maraini- Translated from Italian

5. "Zletka" by Maja Hrgovic - Translated from Croatian

So far I am having quite a good time through reading short stories for Women in Translation Month, August, 2017. (Full details are in the link above.)  Yesterday I posted on a story focusing on lesbian lovers in Italy in the 1960s.  By coincidence today's story is about a casual lesbian encounter in war ravaged Zagreb, Croatia.  As the story opens our narrator, a young single woman is walking through Zagreb, it is a place of poverty, rundown and grimy with homeless everywhere.  The narrator was unable to wash her hair as her apartment has only cold water.  She stops in a beauty parlor, only a striking young woman, Zletka is working.  She enjoys the sensual feel of Zletka's hands running through the warm water in her hair.  She returns home but later in the evening decides to go to a disco and runs into Zletka.  It is a very loud place.  They end up returning to Zletka's apartment, spending the night having sex.  Zletka's ten year old daughter wakes them in the morning, asking the narrator what type of tea she would like.  The girl, Milo, is delightful, not all shy or surprised by the sleep over guest.

They part without a future commitment.  This story is basically one day in the life of a young urban Croatian woman.  I read it twice and would read more by the author.  The story was translated by Tomislav Kuzmanovie.  I read this story in a very good anthology with seven stories by women, Best European Fiction, 2012.

MAJA HRGOVIĆ was born in 1980 in Split, Croatia. She studied theater and women’s studies. Since 2003 she has worked as a journalist in the culture section of the Novi List Daily, and has been a member of the editorial board at Zarez—a Journal of Cultural and Social Affairs, where she publishes literary reviews. In 2009 she was awarded first prize for journalistic excellence organized by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Reporting Network (BIRN). Her work has also been published in magazines and news portals such as Nulačetvorka, Cunterview, Kulturpunkt, Op.a, Grazia, and Libela. She regularly writes for the portal ZaMirZINE, concentrating on women’s rights and their treatment in the media. Her first collection of short stories, Pobjeđuje onaj kojem je manje stalo (He Wins Who Cares Less), was published in 2010.- from Best European Fiction, 2012.

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