Etela Farkašová: Order is not Chaos

– Slovakia

She was born in 1943 in Levoča. After graduating, shenfirst worked as a high school teacher, later she was an associate professor and the Head of the Department of Philosophy and History of Philosophy at the Faculty of Arts at the Comenius University in Bratislava. She made her debut as a novelist in Slovak magazines and published her first short story collection, Reprodukcia času [Reproduction of Time], in 1978. Her work focuses on depicting women’s lives in the contemporary society – the place of a woman in the family, intergenerational relationships, relationships between mothers and their children, reflections on the meaning of (self)sacrifice. In addition, the world of emotion and talking about attempts to find silence and peace in one’s own life, despite the noisy civilization, are the main motives for her short stories and novels. She has published fourteen prose books, won the Anasoft Litera Award 2018 for her book Scenár [Script], and her latest Záchrana sveta podľa G. [Rescue of the World according to G.] is currently nominated for it. “The main heroine is fighting with order against chaos, literally. She applies very strict principles in her life, at least on the few square meters within her reach, she wants to contribute as much as possible to the maintaining of world order.”