The Cartier Project
by Miha Mazzini
- original title: Drobtinice
- fiction/novel
- first published in 1986
- bestseller: over 54,000 copies sold
- 165 pages
- sold to: US, Russia
- represented by Sanje
Tragedy nearly befalls a dismal Yugoslavian foundry town when Egon, romance writer extraordinaire and tireless bon vivant, discovers he??s used up his last drop of Cartier perfume. A man will do anything for his perfume, even if it means cheating a young Gypsy girl of her Playboy, blackmailing a lascivious preacher, publishing an atrocious poet, and conspiring with a band of uncouth cowboys.
Meanwhile, he must somehow juggle past and present lovers and save a friend from an obsession with Nastassja Kinski.
The Cartier Project is one of Slovenia??s best-selling titles of all time. With Yugoslavia heading towards its final stages of disintegration, Mazzini captured the essence of his country??s struggle with its identity through Egon??s monomaniacal and Bukowski-like quest. (from the cover of the Scala House Press edition)
The American edition of The Cartier Project (Scala House Press) figures on the list of top 10 novels of the year 2005, along with fiction by Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan and Kazuo Ishiguro.
Probably the most fascinating novel you will read this year.
Detroit Free Press
This tale of endurance, infused with desperate humour, is already the best-selling Slovenian novel ever ?? deservedly.
Booklist, 2005
Mazzini makes a kind of Hemingway-esque, late-twentieth-century, in-your-face, shrug at the world he depicts ?? and what a world.
Whitney Scott, Booklist
Confidently recommended reading for contemporary audience.
(Midwest Book Review, 2005)