Cankar’s Novel Martin Kačur Now Also In English

Ivan Cankar is generally regarded as the greatest Slovene prose writer. Besides Martin Kačur, already four volumes containing various works by Cankar exist in English translation, which is only a tiny portion of his opus.

More than anything, Cankar became known, paradoxically, as a bohemian who was also steeped in the ethnography and folklore of his native land. His reputation continues to encompass his fierce championing of the exploited and marginalized, and his studied fascination with the avant-garde of European art. Cankar’s strong reputation in Europe provided Slovenes their first novelist of international repute and of an indubitably modern and cosmopolitan spirit. His works, furthermore - especially the short novel known in English as The Bailiff Yerney and His Rights – embody the poignant quest for national recognition and social justice that so permeated atmosphere of late Habsburg Slovenia. 

The newly translated novel Martin Kačur, by Professor John K. Cox, of North Dakota State University, tells of the decline of an idealistic young teacher, assigned to the Slovene hinterland for political missteps. Brilliant descriptions of Slovenia’s natural beauty alternate with the haze of alcoholic despair, rural violence, marital alienation, and the death of a young and beloved child. Above all, the novel is a representative of Cankar’s social realism and his political and economic critiques of fin-de-siècle society.