Diary
Lukavické zápisky
Not translated into English
Hana Ponická · 1989
Synopsis
Between a diary and an autobiographical novel, the book follows in order the year 1977 of a woman writer who was prevented from reading, at the congress of the Slovak writers' union, a critical address against the bans on publication and the party's ideology in art. Withdrawn to an old mill in the village of Lukavica, she describes in detail the surveillance and an interrogation by the secret police, but also love, friendship and solidarity. A spring opened by mistake, which the authorities wall up in concrete, becomes there the image of a courage that cannot be silenced.
Context
Written in the isolation of Lukavica, the book appeared in 1989 in Toronto, from Josef Škvorecký's exile publishing house, then in Brno, from Atlantis, in 1992; it appeared in Slovakia only in 2004. The speech forbidden at the 1977 congress had circulated abroad and appeared in Le Monde. Mary Hrabik Šamal devoted a study to it before most Slovak readers knew it, and Baer's monograph, The Green Butterfly, translated many passages of it into English in 2022.
Who it is for
A diary that reads like a novel, clear and simple, valuable for understanding normalisation.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the work of a lifetime and as one of the notable Slovak books of the seventies.