From 1976 to 1983, Philip Roth edited “Writers from the Other Europe” for Penguin, a series of 17 books by writers from behind the Iron Curtain. The purpose of the series was to introduce new literary voices to Western audiences — voices emerging in circumstances vastly different from their own.
Most widely remembered now, among the chosen writers, is Milan Kundera, who captured the absurdities of life under communism in his novel, The Joke (1967) and later popularized the erotic and intellectual possibilities and risks of the quest for freedom in The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984).
In the Communist Era, writers were forced into the labour workforce as captured in Ivan Klima’s 1986 novel, Love and Garbage, about a writer turned trash collector, a novel banned in what was then Czechoslovakia until after the 1989 Velvet Revolution. This peaceful revolution, which brought the Communist Era to an end, forms the distant backdrop of Ivan Lesay’s 2020 novel, now translated into English by Jonathan Gresty, The Topography of Pain.
Communism may be gone, but Lesay’s novel follows in the tradition of the “Writers from the Other Europe” series, showcasing a new literary voice who has emerged from circumstances different from our own. The 1989 revolution saw the release of much optimism – yay, freedom! – followed by the collapse into a confusion of dashed hopes. The 2008 global financial crisis compounded the despair. Where the West had once offered dreams and moral clarity, this new world offered a tough road to hoe.
Lesay has a PhD in political science and from 2015–2017 served as the Slovak State Secretary of the Finance Ministry. He contributed to an essay on “Political Economy of Crisis Management” published in the Europe-Asia Studies journal’s special 2013 issue on “Transition Economies after the Crisis of 2008.”
Lesay is comfortable with data and figures, no doubt; he’s also gifted with words. In The Topography of Pain, he has told a story of crisis management in the form of three interwoven stories. One takes place post 1989, one takes place in contemporary Slovakia, and the third takes place 30 years in the future. The three time periods focus on three members of a family: a father, a daughter, and a grandson. Each of them exists in deeply unstable worlds.
Though the instability is different for each of them, readers are drawn to connect the dots. For each generation, there is crisis; in some ways it is the same crisis. Each one struggles to make the best of it. We are not far here from Kundera’s joke or Klima’s trash collector, except the ideological and economic system is capitalism now, not communism. How to live? How to survive?
The novel consists of three parts, one for each time period and character. Within each section, time is fragmented, which can make for a challenging reading experience. After a while, the events form a collage in the mind and the connections are understood to be more intuitive than logical. The invisible hand behind it all remains a mystery. One is reminded that what Kundera found unbearably light was related to Nietzsche’s theory of eternal return, the idea that history is a cycle that will repeat infinitely. Carry on.
Ivan Lesay (1980) was born in Trnava, (Czecho-)Slovakia. He studied and taught political science and political economy at universities in Trnava, Budapest, Bratislava and Vienna. His professional career has been centered around European investments and green energy. Lesay made his literary debut with a children’s book and has authored short stories, including some for radio. His debut novel Topography of Pain was published in 2020 and received the prestigious 3rd place in the Slovak National Book of the Year 2020 award.
Jonathan Gresty (1965) grew up in a British town in Cheshire but has lived more than half his life in Slovakia. He is a university teacher but has also worked as a translator from Slovak into English for many years and has several translations of novels to his credit. He has written several short stories and theatre plays, in which he has also acted. He is married and has two grown-up children.
Publisher: Guernica Editions (October 31, 2024)
Paperback 9″ x 6″ | 200 pages
ISBN: 9781771839181
Michael Bryson has been reviewing books since the 1990s in publications such as The Kitchener-Waterloo Record, Paragraph Magazine, Id Magazine, and Quill & Quire. His short story collections include Thirteen Shades of Black and White (1999) and The Lizard and Other Stories (2009). His fiction has appeared in Best Canadian Stories and other anthologies. His story Survival is available as a Kindle single. From 1999-2018, he oversaw 78 issues of fiction, poetry, reviews, author interviews, essays, and other features at The Danforth Review. He lives in Scarborough, Ontario, and blogs at Art/Life: Scribblings.