Námestie kozmonautov

A novel about an 'invisible generation', people born around 1958 and shaped by the Soviet occupation and their admiration for the West, who had to learn Russian at school and, after the fall of communism, must suddenly switch to English: the author calls them Generation Ю. They have lost their ambitions but not their dignity. Two friends from childhood, unemployed Maroš and Igor, who comes back to his home town after many years, enter the new millennium as men in their forties in Veľké Roje, a little town that once made weapons in secret, hosted a Soviet base and raised monuments to other people's victories, where a church has been converted into a Gagarin centre. Each copes with the upheaval in his own way, living out a grotesque as if Laurel and Hardy were attempting Hamlet.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

243 pages in the original

Genres

Satire (assigned by AI)

Set in

Slovakia, 2000s

First published

2007 by Koloman Kertész Bagala

Author's age

49 when first published

ISBN

9788089129935 (original)