BELLEVUE – A novel by Ivana Dobrakovová

(jointly translated from the Slovak)

Jantar Publishing, London, ISBN 978-0-9934467-7-1, October 2019

Longlisted for the 2021 European Bank for Research and Development Literary Prize

Link to buy here

“But the key role in making Balla’s – and Dobrakovová’s – fiction so readable for a British audience is played by the translators, Julia and Peter Sherwood. With their linguistic skills and perfect pitch, they have done as much for the international reputation of Slovak prose as any single Slovak writer.” – Donald Rayfield, Literary Review, October 2019

“Bellevue” is not a comfortable read, but nor is it meant to be: it is a brave and unflinching account of mental illness, and an unsparing critique of a world that fosters it.  Bellevue is the first novel of award-winning Slovak writer Ivana Dobrakovová, and it is a harrowing account of one young woman’s psychological unravelling. […]  Her rapid decline is mirrored in subtle shifts in the writing style, and particularly in the punctuation, which fails gradually […] – these features are not only important to notice, but also to convey, and this fragmented style is superbly conveyed in the translation.” Helen Vassallo in Translating Women, January 2020

“Ivana Dobrakovová is well known in her native Slovakia as a translator of Elena Ferrante. In Bellevue she shows even greater ability than Ferrante to get into the mind of a rebellious adolescent girl.” Donald Rayfield in Literary Review, October 2019

“It is the confidence with which Dobrakovová conveys a young woman’s unravelling and her alienation from her peers that most impresses in this powerful novel.” Lucy Popescu, Riveting Reviews, October 2019