Forbidden Bread (new)

Forbidden Bread is an unusual love story that covers a great deal of territory, both emotionally and geographically. The author leaves behind a career as a financial analyst to pursue Aleš Debeljak, a womanizing Slovenian poet who catches her eye at a cocktail party. The story begins in New York in 1993 but quickly migrates, along with the author, to Slovenia, a tiny Central European country that is undergoing the sudden transformation from erstwhile republic of the violently disintegrating Yugoslavia to independent nation state, and is also beginning the hard-luck scramble out of the known indignities of communism into the lesser known indignities of capitalism and mass consumerism. An absurdly complicated language, an apartment not much larger than a New York closet, a dying communist bureaucracy, politically-incorrect jokes about inept Bosnians and lazy Montenegrins, hard-to-swallow folk remedies, old-fashioned sexism and alcoholism are just a few of the many challenges that Erica faces in her new home. And yet over the course of her early years in Slovenia, she comes to know and love her new husband’s family, the quirky but quickly modernizing Ljubljana, and the fast-disappearing rural traditions of this beautiful green country. Set against the backdrop of the Slovenian Ten Day War and the much longer Yugoslav wars of succession, Forbidden Bread shows a worldly and courageous woman coming to grips with her new life in a rapidly changing European landscape.  

Forbidden Bread features photography from family albums and by the photographer Hanno Hardt and others. (Link to photo gallery)

Buy Forbidden Bread:
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www.amazon.com

Publicity queries for Forbidden Bread:
Talia Shapiro, Publicity Coordinator
tshapiro(at)northatlanticbooks.com
+510-549-4270, ext. 14