Evald Flisar - My Father's Dreams

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Sifting through these diary notes on board a merchant ship sailing toward Polynesia, and trying to give them a coherent shape which would finally allow me to put them aside for good, I keep looking at the rolling breakers of the ocean, still waiting after all these years for the head of a Morsi to appear on the surface. I have been doing that ever since I became the skipper of a medium-sized vessel transporting spices in one direction, and electronic devices in the other. So far I have not seen one, but I keep hoping that one day, when I least expect it, the glassy white one, the one I touched, will push its dolphin head out of the water and confirm my belief that there is little to distinguish dreams from reality, and that in many cases they can be one and the same.

I keep hoping that everything these notes contain is true in a wider sense than simply as a record of a childhood impossible to forget. The waters of the ocean are clean and sparkling, and I have not seen land for weeks. The crew find me a little strange; unlike them, I do not look forward to reaching port. I am never lonely; the photo of Captain Dominic which hangs on the wall of my cabin is enough to remind me that one’s own company is as good as any, and a lot better than the company of those who have not left the shallows of the known.

Evald Flisar (1945, Slovenia)

Novelist, playwright, essayist, editor, globe-trotter (having travelled in more than 90 countries), Flisar worked as an underground train driver in Sydney, an editor of (among other publications) an encyclopaedia of science and invention in London, an author of short stories and radio plays for the BBC, president of the Slovene Writers’ Association (1995–2002). Since 1998 he has been the chief editor of the oldest Slovenian literary journal Sodobnost (Contemporary Review). He is the author of 12 novels (eight of them short-listed for the ‘Kresnik’ prize, the Slovenian “Booker”), two collections of short stories, three travelogues, two books for children, and fifteen stage plays (seven nominated for Best Play of the Year Award, three winners). He is also the recipient of the Prešeren Foundation Prize, the highest state award for prose and drama and the prestigious Župančič Award for lifetime achievement. His various works translated into 34 languages, among them Bengali, Malay, Nepalese, Indonesian, Turkish, Greek, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Czech, Albanian, Lithuanian, Icelandic, Romanian, Amharic, Russian, English, German, Italian and Spanish. His stage plays are regularly performed all over the world, most recently in Austria, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, Serbia, Bosnia, Bulgaria and Belarus. Throughout his career he has attended more than 50 literary readings and festivals on all continents. After a long period of life abroad (three years in Australia, 17 years in London), Flisar has been resident in Ljubljana, Slovenia, since 1990. In 2014, his novel ‘On the Gold Coast’ (published in English by Sampark, Kolkata, India) has been nominated for the most prestigious European literary prize, the Dublin IMPAC International Literary Award.