Slovak writer Pavel Vilikovsky dies

Slovak writer Pavel Vilikovsky, considered one of the most important voices in Slovak literature, died yesterday at the age of 78, we learned Tuesday from his French publisher. " Editions Phébus regret to announce the death of the Slovak writer Pavel Vilikovsky on February 10, 2020, " said the editor in a statement.

A great writer

Born in June 1941, Pavel Vilikovsky was considered the greatest contemporary writer in Slovakia and a master of irony. The French had the opportunity to discover it last year at the Salon Livre Paris which had made Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, its city in the spotlight. The writer, a declared admirer of Thomas Bernhard, was part of a generation of intellectuals who entered the literary scene during the 1960s by radically changing Slovak prose and poetry. He was the only author to have won the most prestigious Slovak literary prize " Anasoft Litera " twice.

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His latest novel published in French, " A dog on the road " (translated from the Slovak by Peter Brabenec) was published in 2019 by Éditions Phébus. Like his other novels, this book was full of scathing irony. Its narrator, a retired publisher, supposed to embody the " official Slovak ", has the mission, in the aftermath of the disintegration of the communist bloc, to publicize in Austria and Germany the benefits of Slovak culture ... " How can we be Slovak? Asks the narrator during his European trip. " For them I was Slovak - in Zambia or Singapore, I would be the European and, on the Moon, the man quite simply ", explains the narrator, double of the writer.

Also a translator, he had translated the works of Conrad, Malcom Lowry, Virginia Woolf and Faulkner into his mother tongue.