On the Other Hand

 Pavol Rankov (b. 1964) entered Slovak literature with three collections of short stories: S odstupom času (1995), My a oni/Oni a my (2001), and V tesnej blízkosti (2004). By means of the fantastic and the absurd, these stories explore situations in which good and evil seemingly coexist. His most recent collection of short stories, Na druhej strane (2013), carries on in the same vein. In his novels Stalo sa prvého septembra alebo inokedy (2008), Matky (2011), and Legenda o jazyku (2018) Rankov hones in on the fate of the individual in a tragic event in Central European history. His dystopian novel about Central Europe entitled Svätý mäsiar zo Šamorína (2016) is a counterpoint to his novels set in the twentieth century. Rankov’s latest novel, Miesta, čo nie sú na mape (2017), takes place in contemporary Slovakia. In the children’s book Princezné a princovia (2020) he pays homage and at the same time parodies the traditional canon of European fairy tales. Pavol Rankov’s books have been translated into Arabic, English, French, Italian, German, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Serbian, Croatian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Slovene. On top of several literary prizes in Slovakia, he has also won international awards, including the European Union Prize for Literature (2009), Central European Literature Award Angelus (2014), and Le Prix du Livre Européen (2020).