B O D Y’s Slovak Fiction Week: Dusan Mitana

In 1965 Dušan Mitana published the short story “On a Tram” (V električke) in the Slovak literary journal Mladá tvorba, which tells of a passing erotic encounter between two strangers on a tram. After it was published 12 different women contacted the author claiming to have been the woman in the story.

Thirty-six years later Mitana published his story’s follow-up, “The Engagement”, both of which will appear in English translations by Magdalena Mullek in the soon-to-be-published anthology of Slovak fiction Into The Spotlight.

For more on the anthology there will be a review this week in B O D Y’s Friday Picks.

Last note on Mitana for today: in an interview on Three Percent, Slovak writer Peter Pišťanek referred to Mitana as the giant of Slovak magic realism, which is pretty cool.