Published in 2025
337 pages
Lidija Hilje is a Croatian novelist and certified book coach. After ten years of trying cases before Croatian courts, she obtained a book coaching certification and has been working professionally with writers ever since. She lives in Zadar, Croatia, with her husband and two daughters. Slanting Towards the Sea is her first novel.
What is this book about?
Ivona has returned to her childhood home to care for her father. While there, she reconnects with the man she divorced over ten years ago and finds herself welcomed into his family life by him and his wife. But when a new man enters Ivona’s life, the trio’s carefully curated dynamic is disrupted, forcing a reckoning for all involved.
Slanting Towards the Sea explores what it means to come of age in a country younger than oneself, as it sets a sensual, decades-long love story against an emerging Croatia. From the cobbled alleyways of Cavtat, a small town near Dubrovnik, to the rugged, glimmering coastline of Zadar, and the bustling streets of Zagreb in the early 2000s, this is a story of longing, buried resentment and claiming a life of your own.
