Three String Books

A writer, screenwriter, and playright, Jan Novák left Communist Czechoslovakia for Chicago as a teenager in 1969. Novák writes in both Czech and English and has received numerous awards for his works in both America and the Czech Republic.

"There are stories that could have taken place anywhere - of love and hate, beauty and ugliness, illness and music - stories distinctly and intriguingly Slovak..."

Into the Spotlight features the best of what Slovak literature has to offer today. The sixteen authors presented here have all been shortlisted for, and many have won, some of the most prestigious Slovak and European literary awards. They represent the Slovak literary scene across the lines of gender, age, style and subject matter. Most importantly, all of them are living authors, engaging with today’s world and carrying on conversations with other contemporary writers and readers. Printed with financial support from the Centre for Information on Literature/SLOLIA (Slovak Literature Abroad).

Contributors

Veronika Šikulová –Uršuľa Kovalyk – Pavel Vilikovský – Jana Beňová – Viťo Staviarsky – Dušan Mitana – Balla – Pavol Rankov – Zuzana Cigánová – Monika Kompaníková – Michal Hvorecký – Lukáš Luk – Marek Vadas – Alta Vášová – Ivana Dobrakovová – Peter Macsovszky

More about this title in the press

Review in World Literature Today, November/December 2017

Review in B O D Y, International Online Literary Journal, "Slovak Fiction Week," March 31, 2017

Review in European Literature Network, June 15, 2017

Notable mention in Publishing Perspectives, May 24, 2017

Notable mention in The Slovak Spectator

Interview in Words Without Borders, September 23, 2017

For more about Ivan's Daughter, read our interview with translator Margaret Winchell. 

As E. L. Doctorow noted, “The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.” Understanding present-day Russia requires a grasp of the country’s history. While the facts may be plain, what life was actually like for the citizens of Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union is the subject of this collection of fiction by one of the country’s greatest contemporary writers, Valentin Rasputin.
Born and raised in rural Siberia, Rasputin rose from the humblest of origins to the heights of literary acclaim during the 1970s. While his novellas from that period exemplify the village-prose movement in Russian literature, they also display a distinctive voice, narrative technique, and style along with universal appeal that set them apart. Although never a member of the Communist Party, the author received the Soviet Union’s highest literary awards and became extremely popular among its avid readers.
During the tumultuous years of perestroika, Rasputin, deeply concerned about his homeland, stopped writing fiction and became involved in politics. But after serving in the Congress of People’s Deputies and as an adviser to Gorbachev, he soon became disillusioned with Russia’s political process and returned to his literary calling, creating works that depict a new world whose trials and traumas he knew well.
The stories and novella in this collection delve into the burning issues of that time, including questions of morality and sheer survival. By bringing a variety of characters to life—from young children, teenagers, and middle-aged adults to old peasants and new Russians—Rasputin allows readers to experience the immediate post-Soviet past together with ordinary folks. In addition to shedding light on the present, these works offer an armchair trip to Siberia along with the aesthetic pleasures that flow from the pen of a master storyteller.

Book Reviews

Review by Paul Richardson in Russian Life, Jul/Aug2017, Vol. 60 Issue 4

This is the first title in Slavica's new imprint, Three String Books. Three String Books is an imprint of Slavica Publishers devoted to translations of literary works and belles-lettres from Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and the other successor states of the former Soviet Union. Apollon Bezobrazov is a novel by a “recovered Surrealist.” Making an uncharacteristic detour into prose in the 1920s, the Russian émigré poet Boris Poplavsky presents a novel that reveals the Surrealist influence of prominent Parisian contemporaries like André Breton and Louis Aragon and rebels from it. The hero, and the novel’s namesake, embodies the figure of the urban hippie—the flâneur of French literature—while the narrator, a young Russian, falls under his spell. The story describes in colorful, poetic detail the hand-to-mouth existence of a small band of displaced Russians in Paris and Italy. It chronicles their poverty, their diversions, their intensely played out love affairs, and Bezobrazov’s gradual transformation in the eyes of his admiring followers. The novel abounds in allusions to eastern religion, western philosophy, and 19th-century Russian literature. In its experimental mixing of genres, the work echoes Joyce’s Ulysses, while in its use of extended metaphors it reveals the stylistic impact of Marcel Proust. Not published in complete form in Russian until 1993, Apollon Bezobrazov significantly broadens our understanding of Russian prose produced in the interwar emigration. John M. Kopper is Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College. He has co-edited Essays in the Art and Theory of Translation (1997) and “A Convenient Territory”: Russian Literature at the Edge of Modernity (2015), and in addition to articles devoted to Poplavsky, has published on Tolstoy, Gogol, Nabokov, and Bely.

Book Reviews

Review by Bryan Karetnyk in The Times Literary Supplement, December 14, 2016