Our author
PAVOL
RANKOV
Pavol Rankov, born in 1964 in Poprad, is a writer of prose fiction, essayist, journalist, information scientist, and university pedagogue, making him one of the most outstanding contemporary writers in Slovakia. He studied library science at the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University in Bratislava, graduating in 1993, and has since worked in the Department of Library and Information Science at the same university, where he currently holds the position of Associate Professor. He resides in Bratislava.
His literary debut, the short-story collection S odstupom času (At a Distance in Time, 1995), is written in the tradition of magic realism, using elements of mystery, mystification, irrationality, and concluding with a startling punchline that has become typical of Rankov. The collection received the Ivan Krasko Prize for best debut and the Jean Monnet Premio Letterario Internazionale award. His first novel, Stalo sa prvého septembra (alebo inokedy) / It Happened on the First of September (Or Some Other Time), was published in 2008. The story, spanning three decades (1938–1968) and featuring three friends—a Czech, a Jew, and a Hungarian—sharing a love for a girl, highlights significant dates in Slovak history, including both the Nazi and Russian occupations. The novel was awarded the EU Prize for Literature in 2009. Rankov's second novel, Matky (Mothers, 2011), examines motherhood in the extreme conditions of a Soviet Gulag after World War II. He returned to the shorter form in 2013 with the collection of stories Na druhej strane (On the Other Side), followed by the novel Miesta, čo nie sú na mape (Places That Aren't on the Map, 2017) and the historically inclined Legenda o jazyku (Legend of a Language, 2018).
His latest novel, Klinika (The Clinic, 2022), is an authentic personal testimony that can be described as a cry for help. In the book Princezné a princovia (2020), Rankov pays parodic homage to the genre of classic fairy tales. In 2021, a comprehensive re-edition of the work was published under the title 45x Pavol Rankov, containing 45 short stories.
Pavol Rankov has received numerous awards for his work in Slovakia and abroad, including the European Union Prize for Literature (2009), the Nagroda Angelus (2010), and the Prix du livre Européen (2020). His books have been translated into 15 world languages.
his books
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