Birth date

29. 01. 1919  [en] Valašské Klobouky

Death date

24. 02. 1994  [en] Bratislava

Fields of interest

próza, poézia, dráma, literatúra faktu, publicistika

Briefly about author

Ladislav Mňačko was essentially a journalist, who, nevertheless had artistic ambitions from the start. He entered literature in 1945 with the play Partisans, written in Czech. He also tried his hand at poetry, and his satirical verses were successful (Drums and Cymbals). He became famous as a prose writer, mainly through his novels Death is Called Engelchen and The Taste of Power. In the first novel he expands on a theme of the fight against German Fascism, the second is a sharp criticism of the personality cult. The subject of the first novel is based on the motifs of guilt and morality. Facing German oppression the partisans retreat from the village of Ploština, the Germans burn it down and massacre its inhabitants. Mňačko focuses also on the fate of a Jewish girl who sleeps with high German officers in order to get access to classified information which she delivers to the partisans.
In the novel The Taste of Power the author posed the question of when and under what circumstances communists, fighters for a more just society, became absolute rulers over life and death of ordinary people. It is a novel-pamphlet in which epic evocation is absent. It covers a range of situations and episodes, incriminating a former partisan commander and later important political actor of betraying communist ideals and usurping absolute power.
Mňačko`s publicism from the beginning of the 1960`s marks the road to this novel, mainly the book Overdue Reportages, where he came to terms with the political trials of the early 1950`s which convicted the so-called bourgeois nationalists and Zionists. The trials started political deformation, the harassment of innocent people, and the fabrication of spies and other so-called enemies of the regime. The trials, which often ended in execution, spread fear throughout the whole of society. Mňačko decided to write the truth about this period: "I said to myself that the fear that paralyzed me could destroy me. This fear was hell. Victims were selected at random, no-one knew what they were accused of, why they were accused, what their sentence would be. I told myself, stop the fear and make them afraid." In the book The Seventh Night Mňačko definitively came to terms with "real" socialism and the communist idea of changing the world. He openly admitted his own errors and apologized for them.

Briefly about production

prose:
Marx Street (Marxova ulica, 1957, short stories), Death is Called Engelchen (Smrť sa volá Engelchen, 1959, novel), The Taste of Power (Ako chutí moc, 1968, novel), Comrade Münchhausen (Súdruh Münchhausen, 1972, novel)

poetry:
Songs of Ingots (Piesne ingotov, 1950), Drums and Cymbals (Bubny a činely, 1954)

drama:
Partisans (Partizáni, 1945), Bridges to the East (Mosty na východ, 1951), Living Water (Živá voda, 1954)

publicism (a selection):
Israel. A Nation in Conflict (Izrael. Národ v boji, 1949), Adventure in Vietnam (Dobrodružstvo vo Vietname, 1954), What Was Not in the Newspapers (Čo nebolo v novinách, 1958), I, Adolf Eichmann (Ja, Adolf Eichmann, 961), Where Dusty Roads End (Kde končia prašné cesty, 1962), Overdue Reportages (Oneskorené reportáže, 1963), The Aggressors (Agresori, 1968)

works published in German in exile:
The Aggressors (Agresori, Vienna 1968, political essay), The Seventh Night (Siedma noc, 1968, political essay, 1990 in Slovak), One Will Survive (Jeden prežije, 1973, short stories), The Festive Speech (Slávnostný prejav, 1976, short stories), The Giant (Gigant alebo tajomstvo ostrova večnej lásky, 1978), What Intourist Does Not Show (Kam nevodí Inturist, 1979), The Minister`s Death (Smrť ministra, 1972, screenplay), The Lighthouse (Maják, 1972, screenplay), An Event (Udalosť, 1973, in Czech under the title Někdo mě chce zabít)

WORKS TRANSLATED
Mňačko`s novels and reportages have been translated into dozens of languages. Here are some examples:
Bridges to the East (1953 Ukrainian, 1955 Czech)
Marx Street (1958 Czech)
Death is Called Engelchen (1960 Czech, 1961 English, French, 1962 Estonian, German, Polish, Romanian, Russian, 1963 Dutch, Lithuanian, 1964 Bulgarian, Latvian, Portuguese, Italian, 1965 Slovenian, Serbo-Croat, 1966 Ukrainian)
I, Adolf Eichmann (1962 Yiddish)
Where Dusty Roads End (1963 Czech, 1964 German, Ukrainian)
Overdue Reportages (1962 German, 1964 Czech, 1966 Japanese)
The Taste of Power (1967 German, English, 1968 Czech, 1998 Romanian, 2000 Arabic)
Comrade Münchhausen (1997 Czech)

Biography for author

Born 29 January 1919 in Valašské Klobouky (Moravia). From childhood onwards he lived in Martin where he learnt to be a pharmacy shop assistant. In 1939 he attempted unsuccessfully to flee to the Soviet Union. One year later, when trying to cross the German-Dutch border illegally, he was caught and deported to
a concentration camp. In 1944 Mňačko escaped from forced labour in the Reich, returned to Moravia and participated in partisan actions against the Germans. Between 1945 and 1953 he was an editor of Rudé právo and Pravda. In the Sixties he pursued literary work. In 1967, in protest against the Czechoslovak government `s anti-Israel campaign, he emigrated and settled in Israel. During the Prague Spring of 1968 he returned home, but shortly after the Warsaw Pact forces invaded Czechoslovakia in August 1968 he left for Austria where he lived in exile. He came to Slovakia in 1990, was active as a publicist and prepared a number of his books previously published in German to appear in Slovak. Mňačko died 24 February 1994 in Bratislava.

about author

Mňačko`s book Death is Called Engelchen is not a novel of heroes and characters. It is the internal moral conflict which is above them and of which they are only a part. The heroes and individual events are subordinate to this conflict, particularly when idea and construction are concerned. Maybe it is because everything here is told through a narrator, through a personal moral conflict, which gives the whole narration great dramatism. Mňačko`s book, precisely due to this central position of the narrator`s internal conflict, shows a rare singularity of construction and style.

Author about himself

I was fourteen years old when Hitler came to power... Although I did not know exactly what Fascism was then, it became the personification of destruction for me. I decided not to submit. To anyone. I fought Fascism with words, actions and weapons... But this time it was not Fascism, this time it was the dehumanized system of communist power. I discovered that it is more dignified to rebel against violence and do everything in the individual`s power to change circumstances for the better. It was better to live with this awareness than idly observe the destruction that they were forcing on us.

Sample

THE TASTE OF POWER (extracts)