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The Unwritten Novel

Nenapísaný roman

Slovaška

Stanislav-Rakus-150x150.jpg.pagespeed.ce.mzn9LDZ7J3

Stanislav Rakús

When I hurriedly read further crushing criticisms, I malevolently reached for Már’s collection and was happy to confirm for myself that none of the reviewers had been mistaken in his judgement. In the same vein, I derived pleasure from the very title of Már’s poetic work: A Table Behind a Table. How nice!

Nenapísaný roman – The Unwritten Novel is a prose work about a non-assertive intellectual, set in the 1970s. The protagonist, Adam Zachariáš, is a type of an anti-hero. The communist regime persecutes him, but not to that extent he would make it the main topic of his „notes“ for a novel. Zachariáš realizes that behind every ban on working or publishing there are people, not the ideology itself which is anyway interpreted in so many ways as there are people. The fruit of these individual efforts is abstract humanism. Several raised issues in the book deal with problems of this era, of our methodological and cultural imperfection, especially how to understand our past and how to grasp and form our future, if this were possible at all. Although the prose work is set in the times of building socialism, it speaks about the complexity of the world in general.

Stanislav Rakús (1940)

Prose writer, literary scholar, university lecturer. At the Faculty of Arts of Prešov University he lecturers on the history of Slovak literature and literary theory. In each of his works he includes a dramatic moment. He has a masterly command of narrative techniques, while making full use of the poetic resources of the language and the finesses of stylistic expression. One of his most important works is Temporálne poznámky/Temporal Notes (1993), in which he draws on his own experience. The plot of Nenapísaný román/Unwritten Novel (2004) is set in the period of the building of socialism, but it speaks about the complex nature of the world in general. The third novel in the loose trilogy is Excentrická univerzita/Eccentric University (2008). The author applies many new techniques with regard to composition and plot, as a result of which his work can be regarded as innovative.