The Wooden Village

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Introduction Peter Pišťanek (pronounced Pishtyanek) is one of the most talented prose writers to appear after the fall of Communism in Slovakia. He is also a colourful and controversial personality whose many-sided activities were unthinkable in the Communist era. He was born in 1960 in Devínska Nová Ves, a village now swallowed up by Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. He enrolled in Bratislava’s Academy of Performing Arts, but did not graduate. He was also a drummer in a very well known rock group. At the end of the 1980s he began to publish in the literary monthly Slovenské Pohľady (Slovak Views). His breakthrough came with Rivers of Babylon (1991, English publication 2007 by Garnett Press), a novel that caused a sensation and catapulted him into fame. Followed by The Wooden Village and The End of Freddy (the latter published by Garnett Press in tandem with this novel), Rivers of Babylon has become a trilogy. Since the end of the 1990s Peter Pišťanek has worked for advertising agencies and edited an influential Internet magazine Inzine. He has also become something of an expert on brandies and whiskies.

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