Drago Jančar

I simply can't say enough how easily I found myself falling deeply under the spell of Jancar (and I would assume some of Biggins as well, being the translator) as I turned the pages of this book. Simply telling other readers that I couldn't put the book down is not description enough for how I felt as I read the Galley Slave. Every word seemed to help you hang on until the one that followed it. The main character, in fact, doesn't become a galley slave until well through the book, however, the words "when are they going to get to it?" never crossed my mind. The entire story was a beautiful curiosity and an amazing journey through a time of witch burning, church complications, and plague, where the city and state gradually lose control of all that they are used to holding and discover there may be no way back to the order everyone is expecting.

The main character is Johan Ot, a stranger with a questionable past who has a very unique life after we meet him, let alone what we learn about him as the story progresses. The author puts us easily into Ot's head, helping us to realize the horrors of watching people tormented for being who they are, or watching officials get what they want, no matter what. When threats of torture are thrown on him, it is our hearts that pound in anticipation of the pain and anguish that is to come. If anyone asks if it is possible to write a beautiful book about a tormented soul, this would be the book I would point to.… (more)

This novel is a whirlwind of lives lived by one man, Johan Ot. Fortune, misfortune, fortune, misfortune: such is the pattern stamped upon his soul. I found myself reading quickly to keep the story moving and then halting and slowing down to savor the text and its details.

The story is all the more engaging knowing that it was written in 1978 during the height of the Cold War in the then-nation of Yugoslavia, held together by Tito and his version of communism. The parallels of Leopold's Holy Roman Empire, its accompanying Inquisition, and the attempt to hold together peoples being cobbled together by Catholicism (in the face of challenges from Lutheranism, a merchant class, emerging middle class, and the like) to its contemporary setting (1978), as well as that of the American empire of 2011 (when the English translation makes its debut) is absolutely stunning when I really pause to think about it. Looking backward and forward in time, while focusing on the specific story of one man in a particular space and time, this novel is breathtaking in its beauty, humor, and horror.… (more)