Reflux

Eva, a student of African literature, returns to a little Slovak town, where she meets her family and her childhood friends – her brother, who is working as a manager in a car factory, her sister on maternity leave, Indian-looking Milan, a builder, Eric, a popular Roma classmate who has a Nazi eagle tattooed on his head, her mother, who thinks that schools in the West turn students against their own families and her grandmother, who survived deportation to a labour camp in Russia, but does not remember much about it now. The book is divided into three parts. The first describes Eva’s time at an insignificant university somewhere in the middle of a maize field and her return to Slovakia on account of her grandmother’s worsening state of health. At her mother’s entreaty, she decides to look after her grandmother. In the second part Eva takes a job as a teacher at the local elementary school, but she comes to realize more and more that although she has returned home, she is no longer on the same wavelength as any of those close to her. The last part describes Eva’s departure for Prague to join her father, who deserted the family some time in the past and now lectures at the university in Prague. With this book the author again shows that apart from a talented pen, she has the ability to capture the character of the times. Her characters reflect the lifestyle of a generation that is, in contrast to that of her parents, a generation on the move.