My Antonio Djavolo

The novel My Antonio Diavolo is the expanded and revised edition of Sibila Petlevski’s 1996 novel Francuska suita (French Suite). Through the narrative of two characters, through two diaries, one of a contemporary Croatian woman kidnapped in Algeria in the 1990s, and one the war diary of Robert Houdini from the time of Napoleon III, and two more characters – an opera singer from Croatia and a painter named Jacques, with constant shifting of narrative perspectives between third and first person, My Antonio Diavolo opens a series of interesting questions on the relationship between modernity and the past and the constant repetition of the latter. By mixing fantasy and reality, Sibila Petlevski has written a memorable novel of open form. The novel, in which Antonio Diavolo is a mechanical man whom Robert Houdini exhibits in Algeria in order to prove that western magic is more powerful than African magic, is a startling and extremely interesting work of prose which mirrors the work of one of the best stylists of contemporary Croatian fiction. The author skillfully conducts these fantastic stories only to join them together in a breathtaking finale, the sixth movement of her suite.

Rights sold to:
Macedonia, Blesok