In Remembrance of Time Wasted: A Slovak Memoir on the Impossibility of Escape

“In the foreign imagination, Slovakia largely remains in the shadow of Czech narratives—something Prague-centric fiction and non-fiction have long perpetuated. The recent translation into English of Seven Days to the Funeral (Sedem dní do pohrebu), by Slovak author Ján Rozner, fills this major gap in the perception of post-1968 Slovakian and Bratislavian intellectual life. In a four hundred-page long autofiction, meticulously and elegantly translated by Julia and Peter Sherwood, Rozner provides a rare testimony against the blind spots of collective history and memory—including those, as it turns out, of Slovak readers,” Filip Noubel wrote in his review for Asymptote Journal.

The book Seven Days to the Funeral by Ján Rozner was translated from the Slovak by Julia and Peter Sherwood and published by Karolinum Press in 2024.

“It also adds an afterword by Ivana Taranenková that provides a historical framework, as well as some background to the text itself—a lost manuscript released three years after its author’s death in 2009.”

Read the full article here.