Novel
Rivers of Babylon
Peter Pišťanek · 1991
Synopsis
In Bratislava, in 1989 and 1990, as the communist regime collapses, Rácz, an uneducated young peasant, comes to the city to earn enough to marry the daughter of his village butcher. He becomes stoker of the old boiler at the Hotel Ambassador, replacing Donáth, who is leaving after fifty years. Master of the heating, he understands that he holds the hotel: paid radiators, black-market currency exchange, racketeering of guests, prostitutes and staff. Around him gravitate money changers, former secret policemen and car park attendants.
Context
Published in 1991 by Archa in Bratislava, the novel opens a trilogy continued in 1994 and 1999, and is reputed to be the second best-selling Slovak novel. A black satire, often brutal and very funny, made of short scenes, it shows a society sliding from the frozen corruption of late socialism into chaotic criminality, the hotel serving as a scale model. Critics link it to the black humour of Hašek and Hrabal. Vlado Balco brought it to the screen in 1998; it appeared in English in 2007, translated by Peter Petro, and in French in 2010 from Fayard.
Who it is for
For a ferocious satire of the end of communism and the beginnings of wild capitalism, between gangster novel and sardonic fable.
Prizes and reception
A cult book in Slovakia, it was hailed on its English translation as an explosive satire of socialism and capitalism alike.