In the Name
of the Father
translated by Julia and Peter Sherwood
May 2017
144 pages, hardcover
ISBN 978-0-9933773-5-8
Following seven collections of short stories, all published by Koloman Kertész Bagala, the novella In the Name of the Father (V mene otca) was Balla’s first foray into longer fiction. It appeared in 2012 and won Slovakia’s most prestigious literary prize, Anasoft Litera, as well as the Tatrabanka Foundation Art Prize for Literature, and was voted Book of the Year by the daily SME. It has since been translated into six languages. The nameless narrator of In the Name of the Father reflects on his life, constantly looking for someone else to blame for his failures and unable to stop a mysterious “thing” growing in the cellar of the house he built with his brother.
Read an excerpt from In the Name of the Father in B O D Y Literature
More About This Title in the Press
- Review by Sarah Hinlicky Wilson in Slovak Novels in English, November 2019
- “The Slovak Kafka: On Balla’s In the Name of the Father” by Charles Sabatos in The Los Angeles Review of Books
- “Rosie Goldsmith Reviews In the Name of the Father by Balla” in Riveting Reviews (European Literature Network)