Rivers of Babylon 2 and 3

Peter Pišťanek: The Wooden Village (Rivers of Babylon 2) and The End of Freddy (Rivers of Babylon 3), translated from Slovak and Czech by Peter Petro, Garnett Press, November 2008

The Wooden Village is a dour version of life under unregulated capitalism, infiltrated by survivors from the communist secret police and underworld, as well as by new mafias from the east; it gives the lie to the official (and patriotic) view of Slovakia as a country that has easily found its ancestral moral and cultural roots. It is anti-nationalistic to the core and non-judgemental, leaving the reader to assess the humanity of its cast of whores, gangsters and their clients and victims. It was particularly vital, and almost alone in the mid-1990s, in standing up to the aggressive nationalism and falsification under Prime Minister Mečiar. Slovaks emerge as no better (and no worse) than their neighbours or visitors. Pišťanek's uninhibited use of colloquial and previously unprintable slang, as well as a new terse unrhetorical narrative style is all part of an uncompromising defiance of stale conventions, which is part of the novel's craftmanship.By appearing in English translation, the author can overcome the suspicions of the Slovak establishment and be regarded as a national asset to be treasured, not a liability to be suppressed.

The End of Freddy is set in both the Czech and Slovak republics, and branches out from being a novel about the dominance of pornography under gangster rule into a semi-fantastic political parable. It deals with the mutual prejudices and rivalries that bedevil Czechs and Slovaks, their self-aggrandising illusions against the background of a former Soviet Union disintegrating into chaos and civil wars. This is a truly international work, even though it mocks the national self-deceptions of almost everyone, and it points to the overwhelming power of economics, or rather greed, over all ideals and all other motives. At the same time it is a novel of limited redemption, in which hopelessly corrupt characters keep a modicum of humanity, while ultimate dominance is in the hands of an oligarch. It stands out as the only Slovak novel where the one incorruptible hero is a Czech, and one of the few major Slovak novels where whole chapters are written in Czech - which does more to mend the 'velvet divorce' than any politician has so far achieved. By appearing in English translation, this novel will destroy many widespread illusions and misconceptions about both nations.

Peter Pišťanek was born in 1960; he enrolled in Bratislava's Academy of Performing Arts, but did not graduate. His breakthrough came in 1991 with Rivers of Babylon, the first part of a trilogy (published by Garnett Press in English in 2007 to some acclaim). The Wooden Village followed in 1994, and the third novel in the series, The End of Freddy was published in 1999. In 1993 he published three novellas, of which Young Dônč is regarded as a masterpiece. Younger Slovak readers by then acknowledged Peter Pišťanek as their most flamboyant and fearless writer, stripping the nation of its myths and false self-esteem. But hostility from the critical and political establishment, as well as a Czech travesty of a filming of Rivers of Babylon, led the author to move away from literature into journalism, and then into translation.

Peter Petro is Professor of Russian and East European literature and Chair of Modern European Studies at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver). He has written Modern Satire: Four Studies (1982), A History of Slovak Literature (1995), and edited Critical Essays on Milan Kundera (1999). He translated Martin Šimečka's The Year of the Frog (1993) and Alexej Ful­mek's Dispatches from the Home Front (2000). Born in Bratislava, he was educated there and in Canada.