Baláž is not a joyful, harmonising author. His humour, too, changes to a grinning grotesque. The Slovak village after the Second World War is presented in an image inspired by Marquez's magic realism: not only externally, a world of unofficial culture, a world of superstitions, people variously marked, but also through the seriousness of the issues. His picture is expressive but as a result is capable of restoring faithfully the time of the various campaigns - from the cult of personality through collectivisation to the era of normalisation.
Ivan Kusý
An element of the working-class environment and honour in Baláž's work are connected to his own biography and life philosophy. Baláž's perception of everyday life its and details, of mood and language, of atmosphere and specific issues is precise and this results in his ability to extract the maximum from this bedrock and is authentic in description and explanation of reality. Originating from the intimate knowledge of the author's environment, his philosophy is original, reasoned and pure, which colours the whole mood of his novels and makes it appealing and artistically valid for readers.
Ján Števček
In the character of Miriam and her friend, Erna, the author has succeeded in creating convincing women protagonists. Women's experience is important here because it is determining certain psychological traumas which originated in the concentration camps. In this case there is the experience of women's nakedness as the worst form of humiliation and the showing of a woman's body as an object of evaluation and criterion of selection. Miriam and Erna carry the Auschwitz experience with them as an ancient burden from which they only gradually succeed in breaking free. Obviously what is most valid in the novel The Country of Forgetting is that it brings to light some hitherto hardly considered historical facts on the post-war fate of the Jews in the former Czechoslovakia and other Central European countries.
Margita Bíziková
