SAMKO TÁLE’S CEMETERY BOOK – A novel by Daniela Kapitáňová

A short novel (translated from the Slovak original Samko Tále: kniha o cintoríne by Julia Sherwood)

Published by Garnett Press Books, London, 2011. Read excerpt in The Missing Slate

William Boyd in Books of the Year The Guardian, November 2010

Michael Orthofer’s review in The Complete Review

Magdalena Mullek’s review in Asymptote

Rajendra Chitnis’s review in the Times Literary Supplement:

“Sherwood’s translation, like the original, makes for a swift, intense, thought-provoking novel, punctuated by laughs, gasps and just possibly tears.” – Rajendra Chitnis, reviewing Samko Tále’s Cemetery Book, Times Literary Supplement, 2011 

Samko Tále’s Cemetery Book by the Slovak writer Daniela Kapitáňová offers us, in a superb translation by Julia Sherwood, one of the strangest and most compelling voices I have come across in years. Muriel Spark meets Russell Hoban. An astonishing, dark and scabrous novel.‘ (William Boyd, Guardian Books of the Year, Christmas 2010)

“A bestseller in Slovakia since its publication in 2000, Daniela Kapitáňova’s satire epitomizes both the Central European fascination with the madness of conformism and the specifically Slovak attempt not to explain it, but to capture its voice.”