An extraordinary novel tracing the first years of communist Yugoslavia

The third and final volume of Lojze Kovačič’s Newcomers finds Bubi in Ljubljana anxiously awaiting the end of the Second World War. Will the new regime identify his German speaking family as enemies of the state? Kovačič describes this chaotic new era in a flood of visionary language. From early voting systems (where a voter threw a rubber ball into one of two urns) to show trials, homelessness in freezing Ljubljana winter to the warm buzz of newspaper offices, youth brigades building the railroad to a state-run textile mill—life surges through a people lacerated by war. And all the time Bubi develops his ideas about art and the new communist society. He comes to feel that friendship means, “mutual assistance, freedom . . . admitting your own weaknesses, shared resistance against fulfilling norms . . .” His story, in this final volume, is spurred on by an effort to live up to those ideals.

Again and again, the details in this novel inspire awe. With a few fresh words, Kovačič conjures a face, a hillside, a sickbed or a jail cell. Michael Biggins has a rare ear for the intricacies of the English language. His translation shivers with all the passion, shame, and tenderness of the original.