© 2008: Laco Lesay

Biography for author

Jozef Banáš was born in Bratislava, Slovakia, on September 27, 1948.

STUDIES

• Foreign trade at the Business College in Bratislava (finished in 1972)

WORKING EXPERIENCE

• 1973-1976: Chirana Export Piešťany, Slovakia

• 1977-1992: Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Prague

• 1977-1983: director of the Press and Information Centre, Bratislava

• 1983-1988: press attaché at the Czechoslovak embassy in Berlin, GDR

• 1990-1992: envoy at the Czechoslovak embassy in Vienna, Austria

• 1992: Raiffeisen Leasing, Vienna, Austria

• 1993: managing director of Tatra Leasing Bratislava, Slovakia

• 1994-2001: PR director, Slovak International Tabak, Bratislava, Slovakia

• 2002-2006: MP of the National Council of the Slovak Republic; vice-chairman of the Committee on European integration; head of the Permanent delegation of the National Council of the Slovak Republic to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and of the Permanent delegation of the National Council of the Slovak Republic to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe

• 2004-2006: Vice-President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly

Jozef Banáš lives in Bratislava, Slovakia.

Production description

Jozef Banáš’s literary works published to this day have displayed a variety of themes and genres. At the beginning he wrote realistic, gently ironic short stories set in the country side as well as in the city, and screenplays for TV films, in which he reviewed his existence in a factory-like environment. A successful screenplay for the film The Beginning of the Season (Začiatok sezóny) followed and after having collected experience in diplomacy, the theatre plays The Statesman-Training (Tréning na štátnika) and No comment, in which he verified his ability to name the world of politics and its almost unvarying mechanisms in an aphoristic and paradox way. This he used in his later work Idiots in Politics (Idioti v politike) as well. Latest Banáš’s book is the documentary novel The Zone of Enthusiasm (Zóna nadšenia) with the subtitle Dramatic story of friendship and love (1968-2008), in which he turns to account his previous experience with story-telling, ability to write lively and dramatic dialogues, through which he depicts each novel character. Wide foreign language knowledge and access to archives in numerous countries enabled him to create an interesting and authentic documentary base.

His first short stories, Special train (Mimoriadny rýchlik) and The Bust (Busta), were published in The New Word of the Young (Nove slovo mladych) in the early eighties. Later, both appeared in the book Better than Yesterday (Lepší ako včera) and the short story Special Train was printed as well in the anthology of 21 young Slovak writers of short stories Four-Leaf Clovers for Dinner (Na večeru budú štvorlístky). O. Feldeková, the anthologist, characterized these authors as individuals who “live interesting and intense lives and are able to report about it in a nice way”. Banáš’s short story, however, makes a problematic statement. Written in first person, it tells about a coincidence which disrupts and changes the storyteller’s world by revealing deeper, more difficult layers of life. Later, the author used the short story’s dramatic potential and ingenuity as part of his TV screenplay Do not Hinder the Birds Flying (Nebráňte vtákom lietať). In his other short stories The Little Bird Paulína (Vtáčik Paulína), The Heat Began (Začali sa horúčavy),Let’s Go Together to Podzávoz (Zájdeme spolu na Podzávoz) and Animatic clavitist, which were published in the book Better than Yesterday with a considerable time lag, Banáš mainly draws from life in the countryside and offers an interesting, in Zelinka’s way lightly grotesque view of the world of those who struggle with inherited prejudice, have difficulties to accept even a hint of female emancipation and solve their inner and outer conflicts in a “typical” rural way: by drinking, fighting or working hard. The extensive short story Let’s Go Together to Podzávoz, in which the narrator addresses his father in a moment, when the father departs this life due to a terminal illness, surprises not only with a deep knowledge of the Kysuce area but as well with a Tatarka-like fervour from the novelette To Abide by You (Ešte s Vami pobudnúť). Tatarka’s narrator appraises his positive experience of life with his mother, a simple rural woman, while Banáš depicts the difficult relationship with his father, a judge marked by the deformation of communist judicature. Prosaic maturity, narratorial full-bloodedness, vivid pictures of the rural world with the dominating character of Karol Vicen, “the eternal joker and prankster”, characterize the literary most mature short story Animatic clavitist. This story became the basis of the screenplay for the film The Beginning of the Season, which underlines the story’s quality as a “lyric tale of how an old man loses his fortune and finds it again in order to lose and maybe find it anew”.

In the nineties, Banáš inclines to theatre and introduces the character of the French diplomat Talleyrand to Slovak dramatic art. In the dramatic and comic duel between Talleyrand and the Minister of Interior Fouché, he points out the problem of ethics vs. power and verifies the validity of the saying: “ethics is a citizen’s option and a politician’s duty”. Banáš made use of his creative know-how from the plays The Statesman-Training and No comment, enriched by a four-year experience in the Slovak national parliament and broad knowledge from the world of European politics and politicians of the latest two centuries, and wrote the successful book Idiots in Politics. It shows an amusing, ironic, grotesque, instructive as well as cautionary view on the world of politics in general and the Slovak one especially. In this world, noble Don Quijotes, political idealists, fight a losing battle with politicians, who are characterised by totally opposite qualities and ideals. The author refers to the novel The Zone of Enthusiasm in its subtitle as a dramatic story of friendship and love and situates it in the period between 1968 and 2008. It begins shortly before the tragic August occupation, when the hero of the book meets a young Ukrainian woman Sasha, with whom he experiences though a short but intense romance (Sasha later accompanies the occupying army to Slovakia), and the left oriented West German student Thomas. Banáš integrates their parallel and dramatic stories into a documentary web. This documentary layer of the novel presents nearly half a century of decisive events that have taken place since the August days and depicts their various, often destructive consequences not only on lives of the main characters but of the whole zone of enthusiasm – as the author named life and events behind the iron curtain as seen from inside. Based on extensive, until recently secret archives and politicians’ memoires, the author describes manipulations with the freedom of individuals and whole societies and geopolitical systems as well. The facts presented in the novel however do not suppress the story, which does not solely illustrate the facts, but lives its own life, in which all the basic aspects of “socialist absurdism” are revealed that existed in communist controlled states – and continued in their prolonged version after the fall of communism as well. The Zone of Enthusiasm is one of the successful documentary novels in Slovak literature and opens the author – and other authors as well – new space for mapping further topics of our until recently tabooed, concealed or simply “forgotten” historic events and personalities.

Awards

First prize received in the contest for the best original TV play for the young organized by the Slovak Television – the screenplay Do not Hinder the Birds Flying (1978)

First prize awarded by the Head Office of the Slovak Film and the Slovak Film Institution in the contest for the best TV short story – Animatic clavitist (The Beginning of the Season) (1985)

Second prize (Silver panicle) for the screenplay The Beginning of the Season awarded at the Santa Remo Film Festival (1987) in Portugal

Book of the Year 2008 in the readers’ poll of the Book Revue (Knižná revue) for the novel The Zone of Enthusiasm (2009)