Prevrtljiva žažara (Fickle Afterglow)
A lively, unsentimental love letter to Podravina: vivid village portraits, children’s games, and a year’s cycle of farm life—told in Kajkavian’s music and studded with folk wisdom from the Drava’s banks.
About the book
Prevrtljiva žažara paints a warm, witty, unsentimental portrait of rural life along the Drava River. Belović captures people, scenes, and customs from his childhood village—blending lively anecdotes with proverbs, folk beliefs, and the music of Kajkavian speech.
The book is organized into three parts:
- Twenty-two humorous village vignettes;
- A guide to children’s games and homemade toys (with rules);
- A month-by-month calendar of farm work, plus a closing piece on building homes and farm structures.
Many sections include mini-glossaries of local dialect terms.
A charming memoir and a valuable document of material and spiritual culture in Podravina: pastures and river mills, log-rafters and gold panners on the Drava, winter evenings, feast days, and the rhythms of sowing, harvest, and slaughter.
You’ll meet…
- Pastiri on the Drava pastures and their ingenious river games
- Villagers with unforgettable nicknames and tall tales
- Children inventing worlds with willow bark, string, and rhyme
Perfect for
Readers of memoir and micro-history, teachers and students of Croatian language and dialects or anyone curious about Central European rural life in the 1900s.