Ľudovít Petraško: Bygone Times

Far away from home, in Canada, Karol Manik has completed his memories of the childhood spent in the region of Upper Šariš, memories of the First World War and Italian front line, coup d'état and emigrant anabasis. He has never met with Anuška, author's grandmother, with his grandfathers or father, protagonists of the second narrative line, despite this; similar experience binds them together. The family chronicle begins in summer 1914 and it includes the transformations that the history has undergone from this moment: both World Wars, first and second Czechoslovak Republic, Slovak State between them, short period of relative democracy after the war and its dissolution after February 1948. Petraško draws from other people's and his own memories, from the press of that time and documents of the State Security. National oppression during the Austro-Hungarian Empire, national tension in the Czechoslovak Republic, Jews deportations and uprising, deportations into the Soviet Union and persecution of the political adversaries after the war – this period was evidently not loaded selflessly in favour of the man. He tried to conform, but finally didn't avoid the confrontation. Talking about the turning points in the flow of the time does not sometimes avoid the risk of political incorrectness. Because the history is not the chorale, it is a mixture of voices where everybody has his own place and right – sometime polyphony, another time cacophony.

Details
Pectus publishing house, Košice 2009
ISBN: 978-80-969793-8-7
paperback, number of pages: 280
format: 120 x 190 mm
wholesale price with VAT: 8,45 €

They wrote about the book
Ján Čakanek: Sneh, ktorý sa neroztápa