Parthian Books

Though Into the Spotlight is drawn from the work of writers from one of Europe's smallest countries, this source reveals itself to be something like a magic lamp out of which comes a multitude of subjects, themes, and styles well out of proportion to its size. Like the best writers, this anthology brilliantly balances the specific and the universal. There are stories that could have taken place anywhere-of love and hate, beauty and ugliness, illness and music-stories distinctly and intriguingly Slovak-of a devout Slovak's imprisonment in the Russian Gulag, the rough and tumble world of the country's Roma-stories from other countries and continents, and stories that seem to come from other worlds entirely-of real or imaginary doubles and surreal nocturnal circuses.

The book speaks to the poet's own (young) generation about how technology affords new ways of expressing love, while nostalgically evoking times before Facebook and selfies. However, nature-versus-technology is not the primary theme here. In fact, most poems focus on how human beings are entangled with technology, and on how they jointly influence all aspects of being in the 21st century.The butterfly, a symbol of change and fragility, sounds a note of caution about using technology to reinvent love and quintessentially human values. To find the ways in which love can survive in a high-tech world, one might need to look again at nature and its laws. The poet tries to catch those subtle harmonies that are often missed when "human" and "technological" are counterposed too exclusively, as Either/Or.There are 55 poems in the collection, written in a variety of metrical and stanzaic forms, but mostly in common metre, analogous to sung music. The poems are accessible on a first read, with layers that invite a re-reading and re-thinking of what it means to love and be loved in the digital age.

I lived several lives in the brief instant before my feet touched the ground. The music stopped. I landed on the hard surface like an accomplished equestrienne. The equestrienne bowed. The audience applauded. It is 1984 and a small town somewhere in the east of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic is in the firm grip of totalitarianism. Unruly teenager Karolína is growing up in an unconventional all-female household including her hot-blooded, knife-wielding grandmother. Repelled by her Mum’s serial love affairs, Karolína runs away and stumbles upon a riding school on the edge of town. There, she befriends Romana, a girl with one leg shorter than the other and Matilda, a rider and trainer who helps the two girls overcome their physical limitations. Together they found a successful trick riding team and soon it seems that half flags, mills and scales are not the only tricks flashing like blades up her sequinned sleeve as Karolína explores Pink Floyd and smoking, and discovers her knack for seeing deep into others’ souls. The fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 and the subsequent arrival of capitalism threatens to destroy the riding school. The team has to turn professional. But in a sport of perfect scores is there still room for Romana and Karolína…? The Equestrienne is a poetic, caustic coming-of-age novel about the desire of one young girl to realise her dreams before and after Velvet Revolution; it is a celebration of friendship between women and also a bitter acknowledgement that greed the desire for power can destroy any relationship.

Blending the naturalistic and the fabulistic, these elusive, delicate stories fold fable and fairy tale into the everyday, domestic settings of kitchen, garden, car. Women love, and lose, strange creatures they find by the garden gate; dream dogs are liberated from the icy prison of a fridge; bathrooms bloom into rainforests that souls can lose themselves in forever. Seemingly quotidian routines and unremarkable lives are pierced by Kovalyk's precise, sensual prose, to reveal the magic lurking just beneath the surface of the daily skin of existence.