Foreigner in the House of Natives

Tujka v hiši domačinov was Erica Johnson Debeljak’s debut work, published by Obzojre Press in Slovenian translation in 1999. It all started when an editor from Delo newspaper comissioned a feuilleton about her experience as an American arriving in the new nation state of Slovenia. The first installment of the feuilleton came out in 1996 and was an instant success. One Delo employer reported that it was the most copied article ever from the Delo archives. A second installment was commissioned and the two feuilletons were published together in book form in 1999 to great critical and popular success. In some ways, this book, essentially a linked series of essays about the author’s first years in Slovenia, is the precurser to Forbidden Bread, a more unified memoir that tell the same story with the benefit of hindsight and specifically for an American (or non-Slovenian) audience.