The Life of a Working Woman in the Late Twentieth Century

Nineteen years is a lifetime: years of hope, progress, faith in a better future, starting a family and a career. We follow the protagonist since her departure from a small village to an unnamed Pannonian town where she would build her life, the life of a convenience store saleswoman. From 1973 to 1991, every chapter of the novel is marked by a pivotal event: birth, death, homemaking, vacation, workers’ strike. From the big historical twists to important intimate memories, the narrative stretch delineates a life full of losses, as well as little joys, the life of a working woman as an emblematic example of a worker’s life across Europe in the second half of the 20^th century. The life in which ideals disintegrate, just like a regime, a country and an entire class of people.
Goran Ferčec in his brilliant novel The Life of a Working Woman in the Late Twentieth Century adopts the style of a quiet and laser-sharp observer to write all our intimate histories, giving room to the lives of our mothers and fathers who woke up with smiles on their faces and went to work convinced they were building a better world, but also to their disappointment with their own lives and the system. The Life of a Working Woman in the Late Twentieth Century is a magnificent tribute to a lost time, when each person, each working man or woman, could dream and live equality, when mothers hoped they were opening the doors to a better future for their children.

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