Rudolf Sloboda is one of the brightest and most distinctive writers of the generation of the Slovak “sixties”. He was born and lived most of his life in the village of Devinska Nova Ves near Bratislava with a predominantly Croatian population. Sloboda is the author of dozens of works, including novels, stories, short stories, essays, poems, plays, film scripts. In his work, he was based on the original “egocentric” vision of reality and the confessional-monologue type of narration. The themes of his largely autobiographical prose and drama were complex, often painful relationships between people, crisis states of the personality — everything he faced in his own life. The main space of Sloboda’s books is his native village, with its constants and inevitable transformation. The novels of the writer, first of all — “The Narcissus” (1965), “The Reason” (1982) and “The Blood” (1991), reflect the most important stages in the life and mental wavering of the author and his hero: the early youth marked by entering into an unknown social environment and his first erotic experiences; the maturity with family problems and setbacks, psychological crisis; approaching the old age with the extinction of feelings and desires, that lead to inner emptiness. The universal sound of “private” statements about the existential problems of a person, the artistic persuasiveness, originality and recognizability of his style — all this makes the works of Rudolf Sloboda a part of the Gold Reserve of the modern Slovak literature.
The Slovak “Narcissus” with Croatian roots. Rudolf Sloboda, a writer