On the Threshold

Short Stories

By: Dusan Mitana, Magdalena Mullek (Translator)

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Hardcover | 10 March 2025 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Hardcover
277 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
2.29 x 1.52 x 0.25

Hardcover

RRP $44.95

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Stories that entwine the mundane with the mystical, written by a cult favorite Slovakian writer.

An unhappily married woman is impregnated by her elderly neighbor who lives in a building across the street and with whom she has never had any physical contact. Just as his attention creates life within her, his own life waxes and wanes with her gaze and attention.

A man finds himself trapped in a pub on a sweltering afternoon after refusing to buy a beer with his cigarettes. Guarded by a vigilante bartender and his beer-obsessed patrons, his every attempt at escape is foiled until their life-giving elixir, the beer, runs out.

This collection introduces English-language readers to the work of Dusan Mitana, a cult figure in contemporary Central European literature. In Mitana's stories, appearing in English for the first time, the rational and the irrational are indistinguishable. His tales infect a banal, quotidian realism with mystical and supernatural distortions. Tinged with Hitchcockian paranoia and full of unexpected turns, the seventeen stories collected here offer a glimpse into Mitana's trademark absurdist style.

Industry Reviews

"Dusan Mitana's work belongs among those best books, which I have wanted to write." * Dusan Dusek *
"I don't know why, but Dusan Mitana was for me always a very serious (and sober-in the good sense of the word!) author although he wished to appear as the greatest humorist. Whether he laughs at himself (paraphrasing the author he is against himself yet is not a solitary runner) the world, or at something? Or somebody? God? Krishna? Lucifer? Satan? And other divinities he laughs mainly at the reader (and with the reader) who believed him and was taken in. (Critics, don't buzz about, control yourselves!) Because to read Mitana's prose like Holy Writ-means literally and for writ-is not possible, it is just strictly forbidden!" * Marta Souckova *

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