Publisher about the book
The novel Dreams of Love and Death consists of two independent texts, built on a constant play between the real and the fantastic.
The first part, A Short Novel of Love, takes place in the mysterious environment of Eastern European Hasidism. The young pious and learned Jacob follows his beloved and destined bride, the daughter of a deceased tzaddik, through the worlds of the living and the dead, humans and demons, throughout Eastern Europe all the way to Zemun in Serbia, until he reaches a mystical marriage before a rabbinical court. The second part, A Short Novel of Dying, takes place in Banat during World War II, when a Banat German, a doctor, begins conducting eugenic experiments on autistic children. In doing so, he unwittingly helps them unleash their parapsychological abilities, which allows them to free themselves and escape from the hospital. The novel ends with a short epilogue in the last war in the Balkans.
The first part, A Short Novel of Love, takes place in the mysterious environment of Eastern European Hasidism. The young pious and learned Jacob follows his beloved and destined bride, the daughter of a deceased tzaddik, through the worlds of the living and the dead, humans and demons, throughout Eastern Europe all the way to Zemun in Serbia, until he reaches a mystical marriage before a rabbinical court. The second part, A Short Novel of Dying, takes place in Banat during World War II, when a Banat German, a doctor, begins conducting eugenic experiments on autistic children. In doing so, he unwittingly helps them unleash their parapsychological abilities, which allows them to free themselves and escape from the hospital. The novel ends with a short epilogue in the last war in the Balkans.
Filip David (1940) worked as an editor at Television Belgrade, a professor of dramaturgy, a playwright and a screenwriter. He wrote collections of short stories Vodnjak v temnem gozdu (1964), Zapiski o stvrnem in nestvarnem (1969) and Princ ognja (1987), novels Romarji neba in zemlje (Pilgrims of Heaven and Earth) (1995) and Sanje o ljubezni in smrti (Dreams of Love and Death) (2007), plays, screenplays and essay collections. He has received several literary awards, including the BIGZ Award and the Andrić Award.