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. The book was longlisted for the 2018 European Bank for Research and Development Literary Prize.
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