Anica: roman seljačke djevojke

Anica is one of the most famous works by the Slovenian writer Fran Saleški Finžgar (1871–1962). It was first published in 1905, and was translated into Croatian by Pavao Tijan. The novel depicts the life of a young peasant girl, Anica, who leaves a poor village for the city to work as a nanny or maid.

Finžgar realistically and naturally describes her struggle with difficult working conditions, social differences, exploitation and moral decline in an urban environment. The work strongly criticizes social injustices, the position of women in a patriarchal society and the fate of the peasantry at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The style is typical of Finžgar's realism – simple, emotional and socially engaged, with deep compassion for "little people". The novel was very popular among Slovenian and Croatian readers, especially in the interwar period, because it faithfully depicted peasant life and the problems of urbanization.

Anica is often considered one of Finžgar's most successful social-psychological novels, along with his most famous work Pod svobodnim soncem. Today, it is considered a classic of 20th-century Slovenian literature.