FLEETING SNOW – A novel by Pavel Vilikovský

(jointly translated from the Slovak Letmý sneh)

Istros Books, London, ISBN: 978-1-908236-37-1 May 2018

“Vilikovský’s prose, in Julia and Peter Sherwood’s translation, is light and graceful; and the tone is more often gently humorous than elegiac. This is an unusual and original work that resists easy categorisation and repays careful reading.” – Fiona Graham, Riveting Reviews, November 2018

“Pavel Vilikovský’s novel is a miracle of origami: an extensive and elaborate narrative unfolds from a very slim volume. […] Vilikovský has, over fifty years, produced […] a body of prose fiction that normalises the absurd. […] Being a great writer in a little spoken language, as the Czech Romantic poet Karel Hynek Mácha once put it, is like being a volcano in Iceland: however powerfully you erupt, nobody notices. Slovak fiction, especially when such fine translators as the Sherwoods and David Short are at work, deserves attention.”  Donald Rayfield in Literary Review, September 2018.

“Čimborazka, a digressive, eccentric narrator, is reminiscent of Bohumil Hrabal’s loquacious protagonists. The lighthearted tone at the opening belies the depth. The humour, the philosophical questing, the digressions about love and language, the pragmatic counterpoint offered by Štefan, and the metaphorical avalanche nest a complex of painful and difficult emotions that the loss of memory engenders. The result is a multi-layered story that raises many questions—the kinds without easy answers.” Joseph Schreiber @ roughghosts

Link to buy here