And Love Itself — Drago Jancar

After the occupation of Yugoslavia by German forces in 1941, the Slovenian city of Maribor, historically a German-speaking town with a large German minority, is annexed to the Third Reich. In the city renamed Marburg an der Drau, neighbours and friends of yesterday are torn apart and a resistance movement is organised in the surrounding hills. The three characters at the heart of the novel, Valentin, a partisan resistance fighter, his girlfriend Sonja, and the SS officer Ludwig, once called Ludek, each try in their own way to defend their love from the senselessness of evil and the downfall of human dignity. The war upsets their perception of the world and of themselves and inevitably breaks their lives. And Love Itself, the title taken from Lord Byron’s poem, is an astonishing tale of will and resilience of the human spirit against the backdrop of historical coincidences and tragedy. Jančar poses complex questions and exposes essential dilemmas faced by modern man in an expansive style that is interspersed with extraordinary lyrical interludes.