Daddy Issues

Croatia's revolutionary gay novel about an estranged son who finds out his father, a figure he never got along well, has a terminal illness

I receive the news of my father’s grave illness with almost complete indifference. I’m finding it mildly annoying, like road construction… He called me just briefly; he doesn’t want to bother me too much. I’m at work right now. I hang up. I’m furious at my father’s potentially terminal illness. I work at the reception desk of an okay hotel… My job is not demanding—often it’s boring, but it keeps my curiosity alive. I especially like working the evening shifts and figuring out who is sleeping with whom. At night, I get to read a lot. Secretly, I write poetry.

Thus begins Daddy Issues, Dino Pešut’s novel about the generation born in 1990s Croatia. These young adults are sensitive, well-educated, and, for the most part, worse off than their parents, with little perspective aside from emigration. This heartwarming story of familial dysfunction tackles head-on the challenges of friendship, independence, sex and sexuality, mortality, and class. Pešut’s second novel confirms him as a powerful voice of his generation, an author who perfectly captures the moment he lives in, and Vladislav Beronja’s translation brings it to life in English with empathy and humor.

My father has been reaching out to me more and more frequently in the last couple of years... Each missed call would leave me with a small pang of guilt. The same remorse I feel now because I can’t seem to call him and ask how he’s doing. I’m a bad son of a bad father.

Sve naslove autora nađite na: Pešut

Pešut comes out without compromise. He talks about the impossibility of relating to one’s parents and the search for a new kind of family, and in so doing, writes a universal novel about the struggle of an individual to find their place not only in the new world but also within their own family’s history. — Monika Herceg, Moderna vremena