Winters in the south

A father and his daughter. After the war, he emigrated to Argentina, leaving her behind as a child in Vienna. Now, almost half a century later, they both return to their homeland, Yugoslavia, and there they rediscover their past.

Marija has just turned 50, when, galvanized by news from home, she decides to spend the summer in Zagreb, although another war is looming. She takes life as it comes, until she comes across a small advertisement – »Marija, your father is looking for you.«
She had assumed he was dead, and the whole truth is only revealed in an interview with him which she discovers accidentally in a newspaper: »Croatian anti-communist returns home after 45 years in exile«. A former parachutist, he fled to Buenos Aires after the Second World War to escape the revenge of the partisan faction. Now he feels the time has come to throw himself back into the fray…
In this exceptional novel, Norbert Gstrein recounts the tale of two lives: the story of a man who winters at the far end of the world, completely losing touch with reality, and that of his daughter, who spends years atoning for the fact that he was on the wrong side during the war, but, when it comes to the crunch, doesn't seem to know where she stands herself.

"A great European novel on the fleeting nature of time. (…) Winters in the South is a magnificent book." (Neue Zürcher Zeitung am Sonntag)