In/Half

Jasmin B. Frelih

In/Half
Format
Hardback
Publisher
Oneworld Publications
Country
United Kingdom
Published
1 November 2018
Pages
368
ISBN
9781786073907

In/Half

Jasmin B. Frelih

A highly topical and extraordinary debut from one of Slovenia’s rising stars.

Twenty-five years into the future, a glitch in the global communications network is ripping a previously united world apart at the seams. The millennials find themselves hardest hit, trapped in a crumbling world they did not want - among them childhood friends Evan, an addict theatre director; Kras, a family patriarch and ex-war-minister; and Zoja, an anarchist poet. As they each prepare to celebrate their fiftieth birthdays, the friends desperately try to recapture the magic of their former lives and hold on to some sort of sense of belonging.

With its experimental style and sharp focus on the contradictions of modernity, In/Half is a powerful statement on the perils of the future, and on the nature of the novel, by an outstanding voice from the new generation of writers.  

Review

Twenty-five years into the future, the earth has been ripped apart by a glitch in the global communications system. What remains is a world at once completely outside human possibility and alarmingly close to the pressing fears of our decade. In jolted prose that leaps across continents and voices, Jasmin B. Frelih follows three disillusioned millennials, ex-best friends who have slowly lost touch.

Evan, a theatre director based in Edo, falls into drug addiction and follows the hallucinatory back streets of Tokyo for a fix of the elusive mAk, all the while evading robot ‘minders’ and a trail of heartbroken women. Kras, an ex-Slovenian war minister, attempts to celebrate his upcoming fiftieth birthday with his extensive family, but they are rapidly descending into madness, hysteria and infighting. Zoja, an anarchist poet, stands bare-chested in front of an expectant audience in Brooklyn. Her adoring crowd is desperate for a sense of community in an increasingly dangerous, hostile city. As the novel culminates, the three friends find themselves thrown together one last time, on the edge of the world, estranged and yet haunted by the joys of their former lives.

Reading Frelih’s work is like decoding a puzzle. Sentences drop off midway through, paragraphs subvert the reader’s expectations, frequently drifting into lengthy philosophical, dream-like prose that begs to be read and re-read a second, third or fourth time. In a place of hellish, dystopian nightmare, Evan, Kras and Zoja still take the time to discuss their failures, their fears, and the lost loves they have tried to recreate. In a disorienting, pulsating debut that has now been translated from Slovenian into six languages and counting, Frelih expertly depicts a world weighted by pornography, addiction and danger; a place of near complete loneliness where no one and nothing belongs.


Caitlin Cassidy is from Readings Carlton.

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