Stories that entwine the mundane with the mystical, written by a cult favorite Slovakian writer.

An unhappily married woman is impregnated by her elderly neighbor who lives in a building across the street and with whom she has never had any physical contact. Just as his attention creates life within her, his own life waxes and wanes with her gaze and attention.

A man finds himself trapped in a pub on a sweltering afternoon after refusing to buy a beer with his cigarettes. Guarded by a vigilante bartender and his beer-obsessed patrons, his every attempt at escape is foiled until their life-giving elixir, the beer, runs out.

This collection introduces English-language readers to the work of Dušan Mitana, a cult figure in contemporary Central European literature. In Mitana’s stories, appearing in English for the first time, the rational and the irrational are indistinguishable. His tales infect a banal, quotidian realism with mystical and supernatural distortions. Tinged with Hitchcockian paranoia and full of unexpected turns, the seventeen stories collected here offer a glimpse into Mitana’s trademark absurdist style.

Dušan Mitana (1946–2019) worked for two of the most prominent literary journals in Czechoslovakia, Mladá tvorba and Romboid. His works, which include more than a dozen books of prose, two collections of poetry, and several scripts, span fifty years and have been translated and published in more than twenty countries. Magdalena Mullek is a literary translator and scholar.

Motto
A Hot Afternoon
On a Tram
The Hawk
A Christmas Journey
Dog Days
Mitigating Circumstances
The Breeze and the Others
In a Strange Tongue
The Beginning Evangelist
The Engagement
Tank 73
With Knife and Axe
The Needle
The Earth is Round
A Walk Through a Winter Landscape
Evening News
On the Threshold
Translator's Notes