Doktor Mráz – Fulmeková Denisa (2020)

One day in April 1939, lawyer Albert Mráz reads an attacking article about himself in the weekly Gardista. In the text, an anonymous author states that recently the Jewish lawyer Albert Marton, whose name strikes fear in the region, changed his name to Mráz in order to continue to rob and exploit the Slovak people. The article calls for the prevention of this Jewish exploitative lawyer's further legal practice. From this moment on, a story unfolds about the rescue of a family, first their employment and property, later their very physical existence. The experienced Slovak prose writer returns in her novel to the time of the so-called Slovak state from 1939 to 1945 and follows the fate of a mixed Jewish-Slovak family, specifically their struggle for survival. The author thus addresses a theme that remains alive and relevant in Slovak literature – the theme of Slovak antisemitism and the involvement of Slovak society in the Holocaust. The novel alternates between passages capturing the events of the time, that is, the narrator's account, and the memories of one of the characters – the daughter of the main protagonist, Doctor Mráz, now ninety-five-year-old Anna. This allows the author to confront two approaches – an insider's view of the events and a complementary and more general perspective from someone who already knows where everything led and how it...