Čaj s kraljico

by Evald Flisar

In 1969 a young Slovenian painter Vili Vaupotic arrives in London with the great hope that within two years his masterpieces will be exhibited in the Tate gallery, while he himself will be invited to the annual Queen’s tea party for successful immigrants. (Sir William Wowpotitch?) Tea with the Queen is a bitter-sweet tale of lost illusions, rich with unexpected reversals and (self)reflections. The external narrative is merely a means whereby the author creates in front of the reader’s eyes ‘a stream of those aspects of reality that most people, because of their trivia-laden minds, no longer register’. The novel’s admirable flow is interspersed with ‘a cacophony of aggressive sounds’ forcing their way into the minds of the characters from outside, revealing that ‘the outside reality is kinder than the reality of our souls’. Tea with the Queen is thus a luxurious, vibrant story about eternal human fallibility, about our blindspots and hopes, mistakes and sorrows; in other words, as universal as a story can be. Thanks to the author’s exceptional feeling for nuances, dialog and dramatic fabulation even such a long novel is a pleasure to read. In terms of narrative mastery, Tea with the Queen surpasses even the authorl’s legendary Sorcerer’s Apprentice, in the past 30 years the most widely read novel by any Slovenian writer.

555 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Evald Flisar, born in 1945 in Slovenia, then still part of Yugoslavia, is an iconic figure of contemporary Slovenian literature. Novelist, playwright, essayist, editor, globe-trotter (travelled in 98 countries), underground train driver in Sydney, Australia, editor of (among other publications) an encyclopaedia of science and invention in London, author of short stories and radio plays for the BBC, president of the Slovene Writers’ Association (1995 – 2002), since 1998 editor of the oldest Slovenian literary journal Sodobnost (Contemporary Review), he is also the author of 16 novels (eleven of them short-listed for kresnik, the Slovenian “Booker”), two collections of short stories, three travelogues, two books for children (both nominated for major awards) and 15 stage plays (eight nominated for Best Play of the Year Award, three times won the award). Winner of Prešeren Foundation Prize, the highest state award for prose and drama, and the prestigious Župančič Award for lifetime achievement. Various works of his have been translated into 40 languages, among them Bengali, Hindi, Malay, Nepalese, Malayalam, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Turkish, Greek, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Czech, Albanian, Lithuanian, Dutch, Icelandic, Romanian, Amharic, Russian, English, German, Italian, Spanish, etc. His stage plays are regularly performed all over the world, most recently in Austria, Egypt, India (three different production in two months alone), Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, Serbia, Bosnia, Belarus, USA and Mexico. Attended more than 50 literary readings and festivals on all continents. Lived abroad for 20 years (three years in Australia, 17 years in London). Since 1990 he lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia. His novel My Father’s Dreams, published in 2005 by Texture Press in New York and in 2015 by Istros Books in London, UK, has earned him a place at the European Literature Night, an annual event at the British Library that features 6 of the best contemporary European writers. Another of his novels, On the Gold Coast (published in English by Sampark, Kolkata, India and nominated for the Dublin International Literary Award) was listed by The Irish Times as one of 13 best novels about Africa written by Europeans, alongside Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene, Isak Dinesen, JG Ballard, Bruce Chatwin and other great literary names. In June/July 2015 he completed a three-week literary tour of USA, reading at the Congress Library in Washington and SUA convention in Chicago, attending the performance of his play Antigone Now at the Atlas Performing Arts Center in Washington, speaking at the Slovene Permanent Mission at the United Nations ... In January 2016 he was one of the speakers at the largest literary festival in the world (Jaipur, India), together with Margaret Atwood, Colm Toibin, Colin Thubron, Aleksander Hemon, Stephen Fry and other illustrious names. Following the publication of his novel Three Loves, One Death in England, he attended promotional events in London, Bristol and Dublin. In January 2017 he spent three weeks touring India, lecturing at three renowned institutions (National School of Drama in New Delhi, Rabindranath Tagore University in Kolkata, Malayalam University in Kerala), attending productions of two of his plays in Bengali and promoting translations of three of his books in Kerala, Bangalore and Kolkata. One of the best-organised promotional events in his literary career was the eight-day promotion of two of his novels in Polish translation in May 2017 (Warsaw, Katowice and Krakow). New productions of his plays are due in India, Indonesia and Mexico. In 2018 he presented the German translation of his novel Words Above the Clouds in Berlin and the English translation of his novel A Swarm of Dust in the European House in London. His international success is truly astonishing: speakers of languages into which his works have so far been translated represent half of the world’s population.