Fabula Hub presents: Dino Pešut – His Father’s Son

The protagonist in His Father’s Son, the second novel written by Dino Pešut, author of the youngest Coratian literary generation, is a young intellectual and a struggling poet, as lost as the future that was promised to him. After unsuccessfully looking for opportunities in the West, he returns to Zagreb, since it doesn’t matter where he stays poor and unhappy. He spends his days as a hotel receptionist, facing the many challenges in the life of a millennial, the main of which is how to pay his rent, with more or less ingenuity. In addition to class and generational issues, the novel opens the question of intergenerational relationship. Adding to the main characters other feelings of turmoil is his obligation to care for his sick father, with whom he has never had a close or fruitful relationship. This means that they have a lot to confess and offer to each other while there is still time. This uncompromising work, broken into short and strong chapters, filled with deep emotions, balancing sex with death, fear with joy, tells the story of young, very sensitive, and educated generation whose options are constantly being taken away by the society. Pešut, considered the most powerful voice of his generation in Croatia, understands the specifics of our time and the complexity of relationships. With his masterful use of storytelling techniques, he can treat difficult issues in a seemingly light and charming way, but always very honestly, realistically and therefore convincingly.

The novel was translated by Dijana Matković.

Dino Pešut (1990) is a Croatian playwright, writer and poet. He graduated from dramaturgy at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb. As a dramatist, he collaborated with several theatres in Croatia and abroad. He has lived in Berlin for several years and in 2018, he has received the prestigious German award for young drama writers, Der deutsche Jugendtheaterpreis. His plays often win the most prestigious Croatian awards. The author, known for his plays, decided to try himself with prose and published his debut, Skinned knees, in 2017, impressing the Croatian literary critics as well as the readership. The humorous, yet shocking novel His Father’s Son, published in 2020, received a similarly warm reception. With this novel, Dino Pešut showed himself to be one of the strongest novelists of his generation, an author who has an excellent understanding of the moment we live in and the skills to change it into a literary masterpiece.
 

As part of the mission to select the best works of international literature and bring them to Slovenian readers, Fabula actively seeks out new, promising names who help create the future of international literature. In 2020 we introduced the Fabula Hub programme, the mission of which is to host young promising authors, who have experienced co-habitation in different cultures and who express themselves through various art mediums. The first author this project presented to Ljubljana was the German playwright, director and writer Enis Maci, who re-visited Ljubljana in 2021 as part of the project led by Mladinsko Theatre. This year, Fabula Hub hosts its second author, the young Croatian author Dino Pešut. He will stay in Ljubljana in March as part of the residence organised by the Slovene Writers’ Association.