Lesbian Life Without Explanations: Lesbian Erotica in a Crime Thriller

There is little to dispute about Suzana Tratnik’s fiction: it threads lesbian erotica through multi-layered characters within a gripping, noir-tinged current. Just over a year after her last novel “Am Rande des Irrsinns” (At the Edge of Madness), Konkursbuch Verlag releases “Slowenisches Herz” (Slovenian Heart) — the eighth collection of short stories by the Slovenian writer, translator, sociologist, essayist, and activist. In the nine stories gathered here, Tratnik entwines metaphorical, almost surreal dream-symbols with a starkly realistic narrative voice, making it nearly impossible to say where the familiar ends and the uncanny begins.

The “Herzerlstraße” gave the German translation its title

Things turn utterly surreal when the mad hare Njussi hops over a cooking pot. Yet Tratnik’s signature surrealism is clearest in the story that lends the German edition its title. The “Slowenisches Herz,” known in Austria as “Herzerlstraße,” is a vineyard road near the Slovenian–Austrian border, whose concrete heart-shape only reveals itself from a particular viewpoint within the landscape.

That the choice of the German translation’s title didn’t stay with “Die Schere” (The Scissors) or “Škarje” raises the question of whether this is a romanticization that wasn’t needed, or whether the title intentionally contrasts the book’s linguistic color. After all, the 218 pages read completely unflinching, almost as if every sentence could be interrupted by a Slavoj Žižek who apologizes for vulgarity, only that in this book no one asks for forgiveness — for what, exactly?

The strength of the collection, however, lies chiefly in Tratnik’s refusal to treat lesbian subjectivities as something she must search for or explain; she treats them as a given, unwavering in the face of social expectations. There is no effort to render the characters and their worlds comprehensible to an external audience. It does not explain what one must know, prompting the question of whether there is anything to know to understand the characters. They understand themselves.

Gibt es Verbindungen zwischen den Geschichten?

The same applies not only to the lesbian self-designations around which the stories revolve, but also to Slovenia’s local context. The country provides the setting, yet it is thematized from a variety of migratory trajectories: from Slovenia to South America, from Croatia to Slovenia, from the countryside to the city. Tratnik’s ability to narrate the breadth of Slovenian lesbian subjectivities from within their regional and historical contexts—without pinning them down for an external audience—stems from her gender-anthropological gaze.

Despite this, one cannot help but search for connections among the stories. The recurring narrative voice and the motif play imply a formal linkage. When read in sequence, the stories seem to tell an entire life. They follow the same principle as Tratnik’s surrealism: appearances of connection, without ever clearly confirming that the connection truly exists. Readers should not be surprised if what began as a series of short, planned reading units ends up being read in one sitting.