Vladimír Petrík, PhD. (1929) is a prominent literary historian and critic. For over forty years he has been working at the Institute of Slovak Literature of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava. His interest concentrated mainly on the Slovak literature between the wars. His numerous essays and critical papers were collected in the books Hľadanie prítomného času (The Search for the Present, 1970), Hodnoty a podnety (Values and Stimuli, 1980), Proces a tvorba (The Process and Production, 1990), and Desaťročie nádejí a pochybností (The Decade of Hope and Doubt, 2000). In 2002, he was awarded the Order of Ľudovít Štúr by the President of the Slovak Republic.