THE NIGHT CIRCUS AND OTHER STORIES – A collection of short stories by Uršuľa Kovalyk

(jointly translated from the Slovak Travesty šou)

Parthian Books, Cardigan, ISBN: 978-1-912681-04-4, April 2019

“Ordinary realism might be enough if your world is ordinary and realistic, but the reality that she represents, whose grittiness and surrealism is so wonderfully rendered from the Slovak by Julia and Peter Sherwood, requires another dimension. It is the reality of Central Europe that knows wholesale transformations because it has lived through them. To bring this life onto the page in such short, intense bursts requires something out of the ordinary, and in this diverse collection Uršula Kovalyk has found the imagery, focus, language and daring to have created something legitimately new.” Michael Stein, BODY.Literature, November 2019

“Each story builds a different universe, emancipated from what precedes and what follows it, yet still somehow connected. ‘Masterly storytelling that flows naturally’, is how Kovalyk’s explorations of a women’s worlds are perhaps described best. The Night Circus and Other Stories is an intimate book, because of our access to the innermost feelings and thoughts of its characters. It’s also entertaining, accessible, but not simplifying. Really – a collection extraordinaire!” Julia Secklehner, Central and East European London Review, November 2019

“Sometimes impressionistic and fantastical, sometimes naturalistic, Kovalyk’s The Night Circus, although not necessarily a virtuosic collection, offers an interesting and – often chimeric – examination of the representations of female identity.” Andreea Scridon in The London Magazine, October 2019

Link to buy here