According to Tim Beasley-Murray's review in the TLS (Feb. 29, 2008), this book, which is the first part of a trilogy, has "changed Slovak literature beyond recognition" and is "a worthy heir to Rabelais, Balzac and Gogol." Much to my chagrin, I don't know anything about Slovak arts and letters--aside from my own voluminous email correspondence, my unfinished novel about gypsies, and a recent vicious haiku binge--so perhaps I owe it to my countrymen to read this. (It actually sounds kind of funny, too.)

Slovakia. Pišťanek takes a romp through an almost-post-Communist state in which Communism and capitalism are equally and cynically skewered. The anti-hero protagonist mulishly pursues his own ends and tragicomically winds up a slightly anxious bourgeois with soft hands, a big house, and a cultured wife. I'd give it four stars but for the tremendous reduction of women's roles to virgin (one) or whore (all the rest), including gleeful exploitation of and violence toward virtually all. Not that men aren't exploited and hit, but they are portrayed as agents as well as objects. ( )