Posts featuring Ivana Dobrakovová

Translation Tuesday: Excerpt from “Father” by Ivana Dobrakovová

I was horrified that one day I’d be as stingy as my dad. Because stinginess is hereditary, you see. It’s a genetic predisposition, I’m quite sure

This Translation Tuesday, we feature a story from Slovak writer Ivana Dobrakovová’s European Union Prize-winning collection of short stories Mothers and Truckers. Told from the perspective of a young woman who brings up memories of her father, this story—translated by our very own editor-at-large for Slovakia, Julia Sherwood, and Peter Sherwood—employs a first-person voice that is compelling and speaks from the very core of a childhood that is at once stained and sustained by these recollections. Hear from our translators on the themes and connections of the forthcoming collection which opens with this powerful story. 

““Father” is the opening story in Mothers and Truckers, a collection of five stories by Slovak writer Ivana Dobrakovová, set in her hometown of Bratislava, and in Turin, Italy, where she now lives. Each of the stories features a troubled young woman living through, or reliving, a variety of  traumatic events and Dobrakovová has given each a distinct voice in which they deliver cascading internal monologues that are intense, searingly honest and often very funny. As Hungarian literature scholar Anna Gács notes in her foreword to the English edition, due from Jantar Publishing on 30 June: “By focusing on the mental processes of her protagonists, sometimes almost in a stream-of-consciousness manner, she offers us five sensitive portraits written with an abundance of empathy, down to the most ironic details.” While four of the protagonists struggle to shake off the influence of dominant mothers and to escape from claustrophobic relationships with neglectful husbands or partners, or seek solace in imaginary relationships, here the author focuses on on the impact on the narrator of her father’s mental decline and descent into alcoholism.”

—Julia and Peter Sherwood

What do I know about my parents’ relationship? The less the better? To be on the safe side? Mum must have seen something in him. But what exactly?

She said that once Dad had told her, in the presence of other people, that she was not only intelligent but also beautiful. It must have been quite a statement, an exceptional compliment for her to cherish the memory of it so much. To want to share it with me. He had always had a drinking problem, which is why, as long as I can remember, I always thought of it as something inseparable from him, a part of him that was meant to be that way. Just like his illness. There’s no point trying to figure out which came first, the chicken or the egg, what was the cause and what was the effect: his unstable mental state, the age-old proclivity to drink, the genetic predisposition to both that got all mixed up, reinforcing each other until they came to form his very essence.

Nevertheless, some episodes do stand out.

One night, Mum, at the end of her tether, dragged us out of bed. ‘Girls, get up, go and tell your Apuka that we live one floor higher up’. My sister and I staggered out into the stairwell in our pyjamas, drowsy with sleep. We didn’t understand what was going on. We found Dad one floor below, persistently ringing our neighbour’s doorbell even though the neighbour was standing in his open doorway trying to stop him. With great difficulty, the two of us then helped Mum haul him upstairs and into our flat. I don’t know when exactly this happened. Or how old I was at the time. My sister was still at the same school as me, so I would have been in the third form. One of the first incidents of this kind, to be followed by many more. It felt bizarre. Like a bad dream. Like a night-time escapade foreshadowing my eventful youth. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

Longlists and talks in Slovakia and Mexico

This week, our editors-at-large report on paper shortages, literature prize longlists, and efforts to deconstruct the writing workshop. Read on to find out more!

Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, reporting on Slovakia

Over the past year, Slovakia has not escaped the paper shortages that have affected the publishing industry all over the world, increasing printing costs and extending production times which, in turn, led to fewer titles being published. All this is likely to push up the price of books, in some cases by as much as 10-20 per cent, making Slovak readers, who already tend to spend less on books than their counterparts in many other European countries,  even more reluctant to buy new works of literature, particularly by Slovak authors.

On 9 March, the longlist of Slovakia’s  most prestigious literary prize, the Anasoft Litera, was announced. The eclectic mix of nominations includes new works by four previous winners, two of them past Asymptote contributors: Šesť cudzincov (Six Foreigners, excerpt here) by Marek Vadas, and Balla’s ‘polyphonic novel’ Medzi ruinami (Amidst the Ruins), as well as Stanislav Rakús’s Ľútostivosť (Mournfulness) and Ivan Medeši’s Vilkovia (Two Vilkos). The longlist features two other previous Anasoft Litera nominees: Ivana Dobrakovová for her latest novel Pod slnkom Turína (Under the Sun of Turin) and Vanda Rozenbergová with Zjedla som Lautreca (I’ve Eaten Lautrec), and two further women writers, Ivana Micenková with Krv je len voda (Blood Is Only Water) and Nicol Hochholczerová with her taboo-breaking  debut Táto izba sa nedá zjesť (This Room Is Inedible). Another debut, Lukáš Onderčanin’s Utópia v Leninovej záhrade: Československá komúna Interhelpo (Utopia in Lenin’s Garden: The Czechoslovak Commune Interhelpo), is the first book of literary reportage to make it onto the longlist, while Arpád Soltész’s thriller Zlodej (The Thief) is the second genre novel in the prize’s history deemed worthy of inclusion among the top ten titles.

On 17 March the town council of Kremnica, a medieval gold-mining town and site of the world’s oldest still-working mint, unanimously approved an application to set up the first European Translators’ House in Slovakia. Named Zechenter House after the doctor, travel writer, and journalist Gustáv Kazimír Zechenter Laskomerský (1824-1908), it is expected to open its doors in two year’s time. The organisations behind the initiative are SOS Kremnica, a local NGO for the preservation of the town’s crumbling architectural heritage, and  Mona Sentimental, run by translators Renáta Deáková and past Asymptote contributors Eva Andrejčáková and Gabriela Magová.

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Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

Our editors report on the most exciting developments in literature from Slovakia, Argentina, and Uzbekistan!

This week, our writers around the globe are celebrating the ever-growing interest in literature from countries that have been underrepresented in translation. In Slovakia, our Editor-at-Large looks back over the best works of the last thirty years, as well as the biggest literary prize-winners of 2019. In Argentina, acclaimed singer Adrián (Dárgelos) Rodríguez releases his debut poetry collection, and a new program in narrative journalism is launched in Buenos Aires. In Uzbekistan, we review two new English translations of major Uzbek classics. Read on to find out more!  

Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Slovakia

As 2019 drew to a close, the customary best-of lists in Slovakia were topped by Čepiec (The Bonnet), a difficult-to-classify blend of ethnographic and historical exploration, social criticism, and autobiographical psychological probe—the first foray into prose by the acclaimed poet Katarína Kucbelová. 

The anniversary of the Velvet Revolution of November 1989 prompted a number of searches for the best literary works produced over the past thirty years. The most comprehensive survey, on PLAV.sk (Platform for Literature and Research), invited one hundred and thirty scholars, critics, writers, translators, and publishers to pick the best book of poetry, fiction, literary nonfiction, and criticism. Štefan Strážay’s collection Interiér (1992, The Interior) garnered the highest number of votes in the poetry category, with past Asymptote contributor Peter Macsovszky’s 1994 collection Strach z utópie (Fear of Utopia) coming a close second. The fiction list was dominated by Peter Pišťanek’s prescient dystopian satire Rivers of Babylon (1991, trans. Peter Petro, 2007), followed by his Mladý Dônč (Dônč Junior, yet to be translated into English) and cult author Rudolf Sloboda’s novel Krv (1991, Blood). As for “best writer,” the top four—Pavel Vilikovský, Balla, Ivana Dobrakovová, and Peter Pišťanek—all luckily have books available in English. More information on Slovak literature is available on the portal SlovakLiterature.com (full disclosure: I launched this website with Magdalena Mullek in September 2019 to promote Slovak literature in English). READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

Literary updates from our editors on the ground in Albania and Slovakia.

As central Europe heats up this month, so does the literary scene! In Albania, an unprecedented $10,000 prize was awarded, while in Slovakia, readings are taking place everywhere: in gardens, on trams, and at an old mill! Read on for details.

Barbara Halla, Assistant Editor, reporting from Albania

Although it is only in its fifth year, the Kadare Prize is one of the most important prizes in Albanian literature at the moment. Readers might be forgiven for thinking that I use this label because the prize bears Kadare’s name, but I think its importance relies more on a few other elements, the first of which is not strictly literary. First of all, the Kadare Prize proclaims to award its winners the sum of $10,000 (though there has been gossip floating around that the awarding body has not been forthcoming with the cash) that includes financial help to get the book published in the first place. A not insignificant amount of money to consider, especially as in the Albanian publishing world, literary agents don’t exist and new authors have to pay publishing houses to get published in the first place.

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The Multilingual Carpathians: Weronika Gogola in Conversation

“Only by picking up a magnifying glass and taking a close look at things can you see the truth about yourself and others.”

Weronika Gogola is a Polish writer and translator from Slovak and Ukrainian. Her first autobiographical book Po trochu (Little by Little, 2017), which depicts her childhood in the small village of Olszyny in the Carpathian mountains, is composed of “stories from real life that are usually told bit by bit, in snippets and fragments.” The book was nominated for several literary prizes and in October 2018 won the Conrad Award for a prose debut. For the past three years, Gogola has been based in Bratislava, where Julia Sherwood, Asymptote’s Editor-at-Large for Slovakia, caught up with her last November.

Julia Sherwood: First of all, congratulations on winning the Conrad Award! I loved your book and think that the prize was more than deserved. What does it mean for you?

Weronika Gogola: This award is incredibly important to me, especially since, in the case of the Conrad Award, it’s not just the judges who decide but, first and foremost, the readers. I’m incredibly grateful to them. Besides, a prize is a kind of validation, as well as a bargaining chip for the future. I know that sounds unfair but that’s how the world works—the more prizes and nominations you have the more seriously you are taken. Unfortunately. But, of course, it’s nice to be appreciated. In addition, the Conrad Award includes a grant, which has allowed me to concentrate on my writing without financial worries.

JS: Your book is very firmly located in the world of your childhood. You grew up in a small village in rural Poland, yet ended up living abroad, and are currently based in Slovakia. Were you already living abroad while working on your book, and did the geographical distance give you a new perspective on the place, or did this make the writing more challenging?

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

This week's literary news from Pakistan, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Argentina

The Asymptote world tour this time begins in Pakistan, with an update on the Punjabi literary scene from Janani Ganesan, Assistant Managing Editor. Then, we fly north, where Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large in Slovakia, shares the latest publications and literary events in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Our last stop takes us southwest to Argentina, where Assistant Editor Alexis Almeida talks poetry festivals, feminism, and politics. Welcome aboard, and enjoy the ride.

Janani Ganesan, Assistant Managing Editor, with news from Pakistan:

It’s been 250 years since one of the most famous renderings of the Punjabi tragic romance came into being—Heer by Waris Shah, which remains an influence on Punjabi literature and folk traditions. But Punjabi has suffered as a consequence of marginalization during the colonial rule (when Urdu was patronized) as well as the 1947 Partition between India and Pakistan, when (Punjabi-speaking) Sikhs were forced to leave their homeland in Pakistani Punjab (while Urdu and Muslims were expunged from India).

Amidst a growing Punjabi literary movement to correct this historical wrong, Asymptote encountered a reading club in Lahore dedicated to and named after this legendary text—the Heer Study Circle.

Ghulam Ali Sher, co-founder of the group, shares its purpose with Asymptote: “to inculcate an interest for Punjabi reading among university youth; to do away with the religiously-oriented sufistic reading of such Punjabi folktales for a more pluralistic and people-oriented interpretation; and to trace the socio-economic patterns of pre-colonial Punjab through popular historical sources, like this folktale, against the biases of mainstream historiography.”

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Elena Ferrante in Slovak(ia): In Conversation with Ivana Dobrakovová and Aňa Ostrihoňová

"Although Slovak authors do give interviews and appear in public, events where the author is represented by their translator are very rare."

My Brilliant Friend is the 30th book to be published by INAQUE, a small independent publisher in Bratislava, and one of very few in Slovakia to specialise in translated literature. Elena Ferrante’s books appear in INAQUE’s Women’s Fiction series, which features stories by Jamie Quatro and Tessa Hadley, among others.  Titles planned for 2016 include The Story of a New Name, part two of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan saga, Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin, Jenny Erpenbeck’s The End of Days and Kate Bolick’s Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own, life stories of distinguished and unjustly forgotten women who lead a full and fascinating life without the need for fathers, brothers or husbands.

***

Julia Sherwood: Sometimes an encounter with a book or an author is almost a story in its own right. Where did your own stories intersect with those of Elena Ferrante’s novels?

Aňa Ostrihoňová: Sometime in 2006 in Villerupt in France, I went to see Days of Abandonment during a festival of Italian cinema. A friend was keen to see the movie because, like three other movies shown that day, it starred her favourite actor Luca Zingaretti. I was struck by one scene in particular, in which Olga, the protagonist, is talking to the editor of a publishing house who has asked her to translate a novel. The editor tells her that the manuscript she delivered is a great story but it’s not the book she was supposed to translate. Later I realized this was a ploy the scriptwriter used in order to include in the movie the story of La Poverella, which comes back to haunt Olga in hallucinations from her Naples childhood. The scene doesn’t occur in the book.

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