Šeptuchy Win the Anasoft Litera Award

The novel Šeptuchy / The Whisperers written by Alena Sabuchová and taking place in the region of Podlasie, a rustic woodsy region between Poland and Belarus, won the Anasoft Litera Award 2020. The laureate was chosen from among 158 Slovak book published in 2019 by a 5-member jury: literary scientists Lubomír MachalaMichal Jareš and Peter F. 'Rius Jílek and literary journalists Zuzana Belková and Jozef Dado Nagy

Before she wrote the her book, Alena Sabuchová had been going to north-east Poland for about two years, meeting and talking with locals. She visited the local healers – whisperers. "I never would have believed that the world I found in Podlasie really existed," the author writes in the preface of the book. And who are these folk healers? "The whisperers are women who practice the art of whispering through which they heal. They heal and they pray. It's been said that they can bring people back to health and solve problems. For me they represented, most of all, an experience with faith. Sometimes, they are people's last hope. For the locals they are an enormous authority," Sabuchová said in the video document that Jana Bučka and Michal Fulier shot for Anasoft Litera. 

You can check out the profile of the book on our website.

You can also find out more about the Anasoft Litera Award on their website (content is in Slovak). 

The readers' prize went to the novel of Silvester Lavrík Posledná barónka / The Last Baroness.