SARCASTIC TAKE ON HIGH LITERATURE

Her fiction The Old Tom Cat’s Pain (Utrpenie starého kocúra, Aspekt 2000) is an ironic take on the literary establishment. The scope (or quality?) of today’s Slovak literary scene despite scandalous disclosures suffices for but a tiny mor(t)ality – or is it something else still? The murder plot and a mysterious insertion – manuscript from an ancient monastery with all the nuns dead save for the abbess scribbling her memoirs – indicate that these one hundred odd pages are but the tip of a huge iceberg. Deeper, though, there is another motive: if in literature abuse of women becomes a public mater of „spiritual culture“, this, too, can have its consequences – at least in this Utrpenie starého kocúra appeared in excellent Hungarian translation (by Erika Horváth) in the AB-ART publishing house.

Translated by Ľuben Urbánek