An Icy Day in August

About the Book

The epidemic of the “Black Plague” in the fourteenth century, the most devastating one ever known to history, took Europe by surprise, though it should had been expected due to the slow but steady migration of black rats from the Far East. Indeed, nothing could have stopped it. Not outcries for mercy, not prayers or curses, not love or hatred, not justice or prejudice, not saints or angels, not holy relics, not divinities invented by man or handed down by unknown cosmic forces.

Yet the time of relief was painfully short. In the colorful and amazing city of Lausanne, situated on the north shore of deep and peaceful Lake Leman, the plague makes a dreadful comeback only two years later, as experienced by a gallery of unique characters (some registered by historians in the so-called “Strasbourg Chronicles”), characters in many ways larger than life, but with one thing in common: they all suffer a growing sensation of cold that turns August into December—all of them will face death in the following two days.

Yes, all but a very few who will carry out the story of love and beauty, of vanity and forbidden pleasures, of ecstasies and agonies, of doubts and true faith and hope, and thus rebuild the city that used to have so many astonishing secrets—a city little known although registered in history books and not unfamiliar to lovers and poets, and to those little adorable creatures, falsely accused of being the servants of the Devil: our beloved, magical cats. (Hulla, you haven’t been forgotten!)

About the Author

Jovan Demetrius Mihailovic was a humanist and respected playwright in his native Yugoslavia, but deeply disillusioned, he immigrated to Sweden, then to Canada, and entered the United States in 1971. Since settling in Chicago, he has continued to express his humanistic artistic vision as a novelist, a poet, a playwright and drama coach, a teacher of acting and playwriting, a stage director, a concert violinist and violin-maker, and an artist. Of the six novels he has written in America, An Icy Day in August is the first to be published.