MODROSLEPOSŤ (CHASING BLUE) By the Slovak writer and poet Katarína Kucbelová

(English title: Chasing Blue)

Slovart, 2023, 216 pp (c 39 620 words)
978-80-556-6382-1

Literary prizes
2024 shortlisted for the Anasoft Litera Prize
2025 shortlisted for the Visegrad Literary Award

Rights sold:
Germany (Suhrkamp Verlag)
Serbia (IK Prometej)

Foreign rights contact:
Suhrkamp Verlag
https://www.suhrkamp.de/rights/book/chasing-blue-fr-9783518433287

In this original, thought-provoking and often humorous book – her second work of prose since The Bonnet – Kucbelová continues to grow her distinctive style. She examines the relationship between individuals and history as well as the conflict between collective consciousness and individual freedom. Chasing Blue portrays the on-and-off relationship between the narrator, the mother of a young daughter, and an older man, Molnár, an artist who was her former teacher, an uncompromising and unorthodox artist whose creativity had been curtailed under the previous regime but who has found himself similarly at odds with the new reality driven by market forces and consumerism. While firmly rooted in the topography and history of Bratislava, Chasing Blue explores universal themes such as artistic freedom as well as issues such as aging, as the seedy alcoholic Molnár goes through a mental and physical decline while her narrator, on the cusp of middle age, feels she has become invisible to her environment.