The Wooden Village (Rivers of Babylon, #2)

Racz has come to Bratislava to make money so that he can be a suitable suitor for the woman from his village he loves. He gets work as the stoker in the Hotel Ambassador, one of the most prestigious hotels in Bratislava, and in his single-mindedness soon discovers that he can take advantage of his position. People will pay to have the heat on and, in short, Racz learns that he who puts the heat on can control things. He rises quickly from stoker in the Ambassador to its owner and much else. Those who oppose him (small-time money changers, former secret police, professional classes) knuckle under while those whose dreams have foundered in the new world order have to make do or become, like academics, increasingly irrelevant. Peter Pit'aneks reputation is assured by Rivers of Babylon and by its hero, the most mesmerizing character of Slovak literature, Rcz, an idiot of genius, a psychopathic gangster. Rcz and Rivers of Babylon tell the story of a Central Europe, where criminals, intellectuals and ex-secret policemen have infiltrated a new democracy. Slovak readers acknowledge Peter Pit'anek as their most flamboyant and fearless writer, stripping the nation of its myths and false self-esteem. The novel has been translated by Peter Petro of British Columbia University, in close collaboration with author and publisher. Chichikov, a mysterious stranger, arrives in a provincial town and visits a succession of landowners to make each a strange offer. He proposes to buy the names of dead serfs still registered on the census, saving their owners from paying tax on them, and to use the 'souls' as collateral to re-invent himself as a gentleman. In this masterpiece, Gogol created a grotesque gallery of human types, from the bear-like Sobakevich to the insubstantial fool Manilov, and, above all, the devilish con man Chichikov. Dead Souls, Russia's first major novel, is one of the most unusual works of nineteenth-century fiction and a devastating satire on social hypocrisy Pit'aneks tour de force of 1999 turns car-park attendant and porn king Freddy Piggybank into a national hero, and the unsinkable Rcz aspires to be an oil oligarch, after Slovaks on an Arctic archipelago rise up against oppression. The novel expands from a mafia-ridden Bratislava to the Czech lands dreaming of new imperial glory, and a post-Soviet Arctic hell. Death-defying adventure and psychological drama supersede sheer black humour. This outrageous black satire centres on a 'wooden village' of kiosks erected around a city hotel. It follows the post-communist rise of a mafia thug to be the leading 'businessman' of Bratislava, and of a perverted car-park attendant to the status of a porn-film scriptwriter, while others sink to pimping, robbing and baby-trafficking. Into this world, risking his life, comes a naive Slovak-American entrepreneur Set around the wooden snack bars in a Bratislava of thieves and pornographers, the characters of Rivers of Babylon sink to new depths and rise to new heights. A nave American Slovak blunders into Rczs world and nearly loses his life in this black comedy. Tekstologicheskai︠a︡ Rasshifrovka N.a. Roskinoĭ ; Podgotovka Teksta D. Reĭfilda I O.e. Makarovoĭ. Includes Index. Abstract In English. Edited By Donald Rayfield With Jeremy Hicks, Olga Makarova And Anna Pilkington. Russian And English Text. Includes Indexes. Peter Pišťanek ; Translated By Peter Petro. Translated From The Slovak.