Modern Slovak Prose is a collection of essays based on papers delivered at a symposium at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies. Although few major Slovak writers published during the 1970s 'normalisation' period after the Warsaw Pact intervention, Slovak literature did not stagnate like Czech literature. The essays in this volume cover the whole period from the death throes of socialist realism to the lively, sophisticated, cosmopolitan fiction of the late 1970s and 1980s. The cut-off date is 1988. All the prose writers considered important by the Slovaks themselves and by non-slovak scholars are covered: Tatarka, Jaros, Johan Ides, Ballek, Bednr, Dusek and so forth. The volume contains a survey introduction to Slovak fiction from the 1950s to the present. This book is the first to assess an area of east central European culture which has been virtually ignored in the West.

Acknowledgements - Notes on the Contributors - Introduction; R.B.Pynsent - Narration and Analysis in Contemporary Slovak Fiction; J.Kot - The Audacity of Tatarka; P.Petro - The Literary Tradition in the Satirical Prose of Alfonz Bedn r; H.Sivachenko - Transformations of Prose Structure in the '56 Generation; L.Richter - J n Johanides: The Consistency of Blood; R.B.Pynsent - The Contemporary Slovak Historical Novel and Its Search for the Present; B.Truhl r - The Use and Abuse of History in Recent Slovak and Georgian Fiction; D.Rayfield - Innovation in Vincent Sikula's Prose; M.J hnichen - Morality Novels (Alfonz Bedn r, Rudolf Sloboda, Ivan Hudec); J.Stevcek - Mythological Aspects in Peter Jaros's Tis crocn vcela and Chabua Amiradjibi's Data Tutashkhia; G.Lezhava - Social Cognition in the Novels of Ballek, Habaj, Jaros and Sikula; D.Slobodn k - The Sensual and the Rational in Ballek's Fiction; V.Petr k - Ballek's Lesn divadlo as a Political Statement; R.Chmel - The Humanist Concern of Jozef Pusk s; Y.Bogdanov - Magic Realism in the Prose of Jozef Pusk s; J.D.Naughton - The Vision of Reality in Habaj's Kolonisti; K.Brus k - National Antiheroes: Symbolism and Narrative Voice as Coded National Identity in Olga Feldekova's Veverica; N.Rudinsky - In and Out of Reality: Dusan Dusek; S.I.Kanikova - Language, Paralanguage and Metalanguage in Karol Hor k's S pis dravcov; D.Short - The New Composite Poem in Contemporary Slovak Verse and Its Relationship to the Development of Slovak Prose; M.Kov cik - The Projective Interpretation of a Text, Papp's K ra pln bolesti; S.Mag l - Index