Karneval krýs (slovensky) – Banáš Jozef (2022)

This Slovak-language novel presents political and economic crises as merely symptoms of moral crises caused by rats: always insatiable, active mainly in the darkness, living in clans that wage war against one another, and ruled by leaders who mark their subordinates with urine. The rats crawl before their leader in fear and lick his fur as proof of loyalty, although they would rather eat him. The main character decides to enter the political carnival, but quickly discovers that politics is a machine that turns a decent person into a pig and finally produces a sausage from him. He realises that a person's character is revealed when they are given power and asks what laws are for where money rules. He experiences for himself how so-called democratic elections allow one group of thieves to legally replace another and steal the money of those who elected them. Despite everything, he fights on, knowing that teaching a politician honesty is like teaching a dog to walk on its hind legs: it will never learn, but even a few steps are something. He is guided by the belief that the only courageous person among thousands of cowards constitutes a majority. Will his attempt to deratise politics succeed?