Mocking Desire

The first novel by the preeminent Slovenian author Drago Jancar to be published in English, Mocking Desire is a brilliant exploration of conflicting states of experience and comprehension.

Gregor Gradnik, a Slovenian writer, enters the sensual and seething life of New Orleans to teach a creative writing class at a university. Gregor at first acts as only an observer, yet seductive New Orleans soon draws him into a series of bizarre erotic, professional, and social relationships. A profound and entertaining work, Mocking Desire provides the English-speaking world with the perfect introduction to one of Eastern Europe's leading writers.

"Gregor is in spite of himself an engagingly unlikely innocent abroad, and his embarrassed plunge into the savory grit of ordinary life is a trip well worth taking." --Kirkus Reviews

"An exciting introduction to one of Slovenia's leading writers." --Booklist

"As a novelist and a master of short prose, Jancar reveals deep human social and psychological traumas and--like his Central European literary and spiritual relatives, Franz Kafka, Gunther Grass, or Milan Kundera--finds no escape from the unclear, primal, and evil human lot . . . A unique, ethically sensitive, and politically independent thinker." --SEEJ