Anđeo u ofsajdu
The collection of stories Anđeo u offside received the most important Croatian literary awards and the praise of all Croatian critics, and it was in first place on the top book list for almost two years. One of the most important domestic prose books in t
Ferić dissects the pathology of everyday life through bizarre, malicious cases, mixing dark humor, grotesque, and absurdist motifs of the body, instincts, paranoia, and illness. In Forma amorpha, the unstable mind of an artist is followed as he loses the boundaries between reality and hallucination; Otok na Kupi explores isolation and violence in a rural setting; Jaws deals with obsession with death and sexuality; Blues for a Lady... depicts the emotional collapse of a widow through erotic fantasies; Wooden Heron reveals family secrets and hereditary madness; Sad Fairy Tale... parodies fairy tales with a dark twist about genius and doom; Symmetries of Miracles plays with symmetries of chance and fate; Touch of an Angel explores the divine in the profane; and the title story, the most controversial, gruesomely describes a pedophile obsession through vulgar comparisons, provoking petty bourgeoisie.
The collection, which horrifies and makes people laugh, opens a new page in Croatian prose, criticizing human stupidity, primitivism, and hypocrisy. Critics (Pavičić: "Crazy Worm in the Head") celebrate it as the pinnacle of the 90s, although it causes controversy due to its explicitness (2016/2018 accusations of "pedophilia"). Ferić's style – dynamic, unexpected – makes it a time capsule of the dark side of man, ideal for lovers of cynicism and deep soul-searching.
Two copies are available
