“I threw it away in a plastic bag, from that bridge.” “That’s a shame.” “Not really. I loved it. At the point it died, someone loved it.”

For foreign readers, Balabán's work might represent an attractive mixture of the familiar and exotic.

Picture the screen of a black and white television glowing in the corner of a dark room. A man’s face in close up. Very close. ‘Do you understand the theory of relativity?’ asks someone outside the frame. ‘I think I do.’ ‘Can you explain it? In words the man in the street can understand.’ ‘Well, it’s not how to get to the cake shop.’

I have a big head. My face is flat and doesn’t have cheeks. I have button eyes. I cannot stand on my feet. Someone needs to help me walk, otherwise I will break at the hip and fall on my face.

perjury of lightning bolts: / a fish spine rises from the trenches of the wound-up day, / disrupting darkness

Despite knowing what my granddad had actually done, his guilt had been carried to my father and now me. Maybe the restlessness that had plagued me all my life, and the pain that I was experiencing – perhaps it was all a hereditary curse.

There is no better servant than one who serves out of conviction. Only he who is burning himself can set others on fire. Juraj was burning...

To represent this life requires something out of the ordinary and in this diverse collection Uršula Kovalyk has found the imagery, focus, language and daring to have created something legitimately new.

There was a time, long, long ago now, when Michal used to be scared of him. Once he was startled awake in the middle of a hot summer’s night, to find his little brother sitting on his bed, motionless, a dark silhouette.