After they finished the rosary, their mother made her usual plea: “Dear God, please bring Karcsi home safely from the war.” “Amen,” Péter and his father said. “No,” Karcsi said, ...
Spotlight
Magnetized | Review | Winter Issue
In 1982, Ricardo Luis Melogno murdered four taxi drivers in the space ...
Pavol Rankov wins 14th Prix du livre européen
The fourteenth Prix du livre européen has been awarded to Slovak writer ...
Kundera library returning to Brno
Milan Kundera, together with his wife Věra, have donated the author’s library ...
Latest News
Julia Lukshina in B O D Y
“As evening drew on, I tore myself away from my desk, went out into the field, and wandered this way and that, this way and that, until at some point I found myself dancing. At first it was awful: I kept stopping and looking around. But then awareness yielded to motion. I was scooping up […]
Lit_cast Slovakia #8: Michael Stein
The most recent episode of Julia Sherwood’s excellent podcast series on Slovak literature in English is me. I talk about the pros and cons of a virus-emptied center of Prague, the Central European literary sensibility and why I like it and especially about some of the Slovak writers I’ve read, written about and published in […]
Ruritania Prize 2020
Budapest-based Panel Magazine is holding a contest for original short fiction from Central and Eastern Europe. The 2020 Ruritania Prize, named after Anthony Hope’s imaginary Eastern European kingdom of in The Prisoner of Zenda, is accepting short fiction between 1,000 and 4,000 words by July 31. To qualify you have to live or have lived […]
Jan Balaban review in B O D Y
In commemoration of the death of Czech writer Jan Balabán ten years ago at the age of forty-nine, B O D Y editor Jan Zikmund has reviewed the English version of Balabán’s short story collection Maybe We’re Leaving, translated from the Czech by Charles S. Kraszewski. He writes about how Balabán writes “quiet”, compact stories […]
Pavel Vilikovský dies at 78
Slovak writer Pavel Vilikovský died Monday at 78. He was one of Slovakia’s most prominent contemporary writers and his profile in English was getting a lift with the recent translation of his novel Fleeting Snow. Previously, his Ever Green Is …: Collected Prose, translated by Charles Sabatos, was his only available work in English from […]
Dusan Mitana in CE Short Story Issue
“The place where the executions took place was right under the ramparts of the castle of Matthew III Csák of Trenčín. The condemned were hanged, beheaded, caned, broken on a wheel, quartered, and witches were burned – he was learning the art of torture.” – from “Signs“, which is an excerpt from Dušan Mitana’s final, posthumously […]
The Night Circus | Review | CE Short Story Issue
“The collection’s cast of characters includes, among others, a child-like dwarf creature who needs to be kept away from water and serves as a litmus paper in the human world, an ex-stripper ceaselessly emitting cigar smoke in emulation of her act of long ago and an old woman whose devoted tending of the apricot tree […]
Richard Pupala in CE Short Story Issue
“There was a time, long, long ago now, when Michal used to be scared of him. Once he was startled awake in the middle of a hot summer’s night, to find his little brother sitting on his bed, motionless, a dark silhouette. Although he couldn’t see his face, he knew that the little one was […]
Zoran Feric in CE Short Story Issue
The Central European Short Story Issue kicks off its second week with a short story that harks back to Prague’s more fun and disreputable days of the early 90s. “That afternoon he took a taxi ride, bought a second-hand violin on the street of Alchemists, visited museums, had lunch and drank the best Austrian wine, […]
Anna Bolava in CE Short Story Issue
“I didn’t shine a light there. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself to. I only heard it. You and your friends. I started to see why you were thinking like an insect in the last days. I wasn’t disturbing you. I let the flies and worms and maybe even the rats continue on. […]
