I Saw Her That Night, a love story in time of war, is a novel about a
few years in the life and mysterious disappearance of Veronika Zarnik, a
young bourgeois woman from Ljubljana, sucked into the whirlwind of a
turbulent period in history. We follow her story from the perspective of
five different characters, who also talk about themselves, as well as
the troubled Slovenian times before and during World War II; times that
swallowed, like a Moloch, not only the people of various beliefs
involved in historical events, but also those who lived on the fringes
of tumultuous events, which they did not even fully comprehend--they
only wanted to live. But "only" to live was an illusion: it was a time
when, even under the seemingly safe and idyllic shelter of a manor house
in Slovenia, it was impossible to avoid the rushing train of violence.
Drago Jančar won both the Best Foreign Book Prize (Prix du meilleur
livre etranger) and The Kresnik Award for I Saw Her That Night. Often
described as "the seismologist of a chaotic history," the celebrated
Slovenian novelist has received a number of other honors, including the
European Prize for Literature (Prix Européen de Littérature).