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The British publisher Comma Press published the anthology The Book of Bratislava in March of this year, which is part of the extensive Reading the City series dedicated to cities worldwide. The book consists of an introductory essay and ten short stories by ten authors, each translated by a translator. The anthology was edited by translator Júlia Sherwood and literary scholar Radoslav Passia from the Institute of Slovak Literature of the Slovak Academy of Sciences.

Based on the relatively strict content and formal criteria of the publisher, only texts by Lajos Grendel, Igor Hochel, Barbora Hrínová, Jana Juráňová, Lucie Piussi, Richard Pupala, Ján Rozner, Rudolf Sloboda, Alta Vášová and Eva Vozárová, which have not been published in English, were included in the selection of Bratislava short stories. They literally map the transformations of the Slovak capital. They were translated into English by Katarina Gephardt, Jonathan Gresty, Paul Kaye, Janet Livingstone, John Minahane, Magdalena Mullek, Charles Sabatos, David Short and Isabel Stainsby, and the short story by Lajos Grendel was translated from Hungarian by Peter Sherwood.

The anthology was initiated by the tireless promoter of Slovak literature abroad, Júlia Sherwood, and it is not by chance that she approached Radoslav Passia, co-editor of the scholarly monograph Literary Landscapes of Bratislava: An Image of the City after 1918, when compiling it.

The book was recently launched at the London Book Fair. It will be presented to the Slovak audience on Tuesday, April 28, at 6:00 p.m. at the Bratislava bookstore Artforum, in the presence of the editorial duo Radoslav Passia and Júlia Sherwood. Dado Nagy will moderate the event.

Compiled by: Jana Vicenová, Institute of Slovak Literature of the Slovak Academy of Sciences