Mystifikátor

The main line of the story is a pair: the watcher, who narrates, and the watched, the hero; the native Kamil Váhal and the naturalising foreigner Mehony each find themselves at times observed and at times observing, and both are unimaginably alone. The novel could be the absurd story of an anti-hero unable to run a successful life, but also a novel of the upheavals Slovakia went through, from the birth of the independent republic to the arrival of supermarkets. It is in turn realistic prose, a psychiatric record, the notes of a paranoiac, science fiction, a political thriller and a parody of the present, and it asks whether it is better to be watched or to watch, and who directs our fate: ourselves, secret conspiracies or alien civilisations.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

319 pages in the original

Genres

Satire (assigned by AI)

Set in

Slovakia, 1990s–2000s

First published

2008 by Kalligram

Author's age

40 when first published

ISBN

9788081011313 (original)