Záchytka

Three prose pieces share one setting and one protagonist: an ambitious poet who works as an orderly at a sobering-up station somewhere in an unnamed town in eastern Slovakia, drawing on the author's own years in the job. The station teems with lost souls, alcoholics, brawlers, social cases and, of course, policemen, and countless human dramas and unexpected encounters play out there. Alongside a mosaic of the station's daily routine and its colourful characters come empathetic portraits that stand against the indifferent routine and pragmatic callousness the narrator has had to adopt. He says he does not want to pity anyone, as it would weigh on him, but the fates of the people he records are not indifferent to him.

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About the book

Form

Short stories

Length

82 pages in the original

Set in

Slovakia

First published

2009 by Kalligram

Author's age

49 when first published

ISBN

9788081012389 (original)