In the novel Beginners, the author contrasts the youthful idealism embodied in the famous student protests in the universities across Croatia in 2009. and the later life of these same young rebellious people, now emigrants and unskilled workers in Germany.
The narrator follows two hypersensitive young people, a married couple in their thirties, with non-marketable degrees in philosophy who are – in an unfavourable balance of misery, bitterness and hope – trying to fight for their place under the sun and at the same time remain as mentally stable as possible. As the title somewhat ironically suggests, they want to start from the beginning. Ivko contrasts this situation, set in the narrative present, with another narrative plan, which follows the events of ten years ago. In that second narrative flow, we learn that Marin and Lota met during the student blockade of universities across Croatia, in which they both participated with great enthusiasm and persistent hope that a better world is possible.
Igor Ivko was born in 1986 in Varaždin, North Croatia. He studied philosophy, ethnology and anthropology and completed education in Gestalt therapy. He works as a Gestalt psychotherapist in Varaždin.
So far, he has published a collection of short stories Nepovredivo mjesto (Invulnerable place, 2021), which won the Edo Budiša literature Award in 2022.
