Ever Green Is…
Selected Prose
translated by Charles Sabatos
April 2002
195 pages, clothbound
ISBN 978-0-8101-1907-9 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-8101-1908-6 (paperback)
In addition to Ever Green Is…, this collection also includes the acclaimed short novel A Horse Upstairs, a Blind Man in Vráble and the short story “Everything I know about Central Europeanism with a Little Friendly Help from Olomouc and Camus.” The title piece, Ever Green Is…, tells the story of a life spent in Central Europe from the imperial period through Communism. The narrator attempts to tell of his seduction by the Austro-Hungarian head of intelligence, but unable to help himself, he spins off a hilarious mosaic of exaggerations, anecdotes, and philosophical musings instead. The taboo-breaking A Horse Upstairs, a Blind Man in Vráble depicts a son's relationship with his aged, mentally ill mother, while the narrator of the short story, “Everything I know…” meets the gloomy existentialist while en route to serve on the jury of the Miss People’s Democracy Pageant.
Read an excerpt from Ever Green Is…
More About This Title in the Press
- Review by Sarah Hinlicky Wilson in Slovak Novels in English, October 2019
- “An Interview with Pavel Vilikovský” on literalab
- “Hope Amid the Jibes” by Gwendolyn Albert in Transitions Online, April 2003
- Abstract of “Czechs, Sex, Spies and Torture: Slovak Identity as Translation in Vilikovsky's Ever Green Is…” by Charles Sabatos in Comparative Literature Studies, January 2003
- “Ever Green Is…” by Robert Murray Davis in World Literature Today, April 2002, partially reprinted on Kirkus Review, April 2002