Without Anesthesia: New and Selected Poems

by Aleš Debeljak, Andrew Zawacki (Translator)

A major literary event, Without Anesthesia offers a generous selection of the poetry of acclaimed Slovenian writer-critic Ale Debeljak. It includes the entirety of two recent collections, Unended and Below the Waterline, which have never before been published in English, as well as significant selections from his first three collections, Anxious Moments, The City and the Child, and (in new translations) Dictionary of Silence. Writing through wars, genocide, and political upheaval, Debeljak is a poet of Slovenia, of Europe, and of the West. Courtly yet elusive, his writing, in its variety of shapes and forms, presents a contemporary world that relentlessly sweeps us up in its currents, depicting its residual traumas and surprising pleasures with aplomb.

Genres: Poetry

194 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2010

About the author

Aleš Debeljak was a Slovenian cultural critic, poet, and essayist.

He graduated from comparative literature at the University of Ljubljana in 1985.

Aleš continued his studies in the United States, obtaining a PhD in sociology of culture at Syracuse University in 1989. He was later a Senior Fulbright fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. He also worked at the Institute for Advanced Studies Collegium Budapest, the Civitella Ranieri Center and the Bogliasco Liguria Study Center for the Arts and Humanitites.

During the Slovenian Spring (1988–1992), Debeljak actively participated in the democratization process in Slovenia. He was a professor of cultural studies at the Faculty for Social Studies of the University of Ljubljana.

He was married to the American columnist and translator Erica Johnson Debeljak. They had three children and lived in Ljubljana.