“It contained the body of a roughly four-year-old boy. That in itself is astounding, since we’re talking about a time frame of about twenty-four thousand years ago, as evidenced by carbon-14 dating of other finds from the same area, but then came Professor Buttler’s reaction, which… his reaction threw us for a loop. You’ve probably […]
The 2022 Winter Issue of B O D Y nears its end with my review of My Seven Lives by Agneša Kalinová and Jana Juráňová, translated from the Slovak by Julia and Peter Sherwood. The book is an interview memoir that covers Kalinová’s eventful life and is a fascinating reflection of 20th century history in […]
The nominees for the 2022 European Union Prize for Literature have been announced. The award is changing this year, with the jury choosing a single overall winner rather than one from each country. There are 14 nominees this year ranging from Ukraine and Georgia to Ireland and Spain. Among the selected writers is Slovakia’s Richard […]
A new magazine has entered the Central European literary firmament, The Continental Literary Magazine, a quarterly print magazine with an excellent website brought out by the Petőfi Cultural Agency. Their focus is bringing Hungarian and Central European writing into English and is led by editor-in-chief Sándor Jászberényi, whose own fiction has been published extensively in […]
“Then there is a veritable panorama of the immediate post-’68 emigration process itself: from the border crossings that, again, resemble neither the dangerous escapes of previous eras nor those that would follow when the regime would seal the border. There are nervous train rides; nostalgic car rides; last looks; and sad goodbyes. There is Vienna, […]
Books From Slovakia has a fantastic interview Daniela Balážová held with Slovak writer Pavol Rankov, author of the recently translated It Happened on the First of September. Among many topics Rankov talks about how the different translations deal with all the different languages used in the novel (spoiler: differently) and also talks about the lost multicultural […]
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, “I don’t want to come home. Instead you should pray that I live a less depraved life in hell than I have in this world.” […]
The fourteenth Prix du livre européen has been awarded to Slovak writer Pavol Rankov for his novel It Happened on the First of September with a prize of €10,000 to be presented in a ceremony in February 2021. The novel was published in a French translation in 2019, while its English translation by Magdalena Mullek […]
It Happened on the First of September (or Some Other Time)A Historical Novel from 1938 to 1968by Pavol RankovTranslated from the Slovak by Magdalena Mullek Reviewed by Michael Stein The 20th century has no shortage of places and times known for name changes and shifts of identity. There was Golden Age Hollywood, where Brooklyn-born Margarita […]
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 […]
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