The Humanist Concern of Jozef Puškáš

In the complex body of contemporary Slovak prose the works of Jozef Puskas have won themselves a unique position for both their aesthetic and their extra-aesthetic significance. The period of Puskas’s growth to creative maturity coincided with the general ‘face-lift’ undertaken by Ballek, Habaj, Jaros, Sikula and others. Set against the grand epic canvases which constitute the major achievement of Slovak prose in the 1970s and 1980s, and a literature of growing national historical self-awareness, the Puskas line looks modest, yet, it is no less productive.