Most Popular Books by Mark Slouka

A searing, poignantly rendered collection of stories chronicling the lives of ordinary people battling the forces of love and loss, from "one of the great unsung writers of our time" (Colum McCann). In fifteen beautifully wrought stories—ranging from occupied Czechoslovakia to California’s Central Valley to the rainforests of the Pacific Northwest—Mark Slouka explores moments in life when our back is to the wall. One of the most forceful American writers of his generation, Slouka captures the depth and emotional range of an array of characters—from a young boy attempting to shield his father from painful memories in "The Hare’s Mask" to a lonely man whose beloved dog inexplicably begins to sprout razor blades from her skin in "Dog." Whether battling the end of desire, the fact of injustice, or death itself, the men and women in these stories are doing everything possible to tighten their grip on life. In "Crossing," a father hoping to compensate for his failures finds himself facing his past while fording a river with his young son on his back; in "Conception," a young couple frozen by the possible end of their marriage is offered an unexpected way back; in "Half-Life," a proud, aging shut-in finds her resolve tested by an extraordinary visitor determined to shatter her solitude. Like its title, All That Is Left Is All That Matters consoles us with life’s tender humor and unexpected moments of redemption in the face of heartbreak, tragedy, and dislocation.

“A vibrantly told love story” with tragic roots in WWII Czechoslovakia (The Washington Post). An American-born son of Czech immigrants grows up in postwar New York, part of a boisterous community of the displaced where he learns fragments of European history, Czech fairy tales, and family secrets gleaned from overheard conversations. Central in his young imagination is the heroic account of the seven Czech parachutists who, in 1942, assassinated a high-ranking Nazi. Yet one essential story has always evaded him: his mother’s. He suspects she had a great wartime love, the loss of which bred a sadness that slowly engulfed her. As an adult, he travels to Prague, hoping to piece together her hidden past—leading to the compelling story at the heart of The Visible World—an “almost unbearably poignant work . . . a penetrating, beautifully composed novel from a writer with a tangible sense of place and period,” the acclaimed author of Brewster and God’s Fool, named a Best Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle (Booklist). “The sheer beauty of Mark Slouka’s prose will draw comparisons to The English Patient.” —Gary Shteyngart, New York Times–bestselling author of Super Sad True Love Story “A book that will last.” —Colum McCann, National Book Award–winning author of Let the Great World Spin

Born attached at the chest, Chang and Eng were considered a marvel, an omen, an act of God, evidence of His glory or proof of His wrath. Uniquely cursed, enslaved to one another for life, they were a joke of nature variously feared and abhorred, disturbing our most basic assumptions about the human condition. Mark Slouka’s dazzling achievement in God’s Fool is the ease and compassion with which he draws the story of one human being from this ghastly predicament. Looking beyond the twins’ physical connection, he imagines one man’s life of ordinary grace and suffering, longing and resistance, and the ties of love, as well as of blood, that bind and redeem us all. By any standard, theirs is a history of epic variety and drama. Their birth, to an illiterate fishmonger, sent midwives screaming from the room. Condemned to death, they survived to be brought, at the age of thirteen, to the Royal Palace in Bangkok for an audience with King Rama III. At seventeen, laboring as merchants on the Meklong River, they saw their world erased by a typhoon. Consigned for three hundred pounds to an opium trader by their mother, who was desperate to ensure their survival, they sailed for Europe. There they entertained kings and counselors in salons and drawing rooms from Brussels to Rome, and, in Paris, met the woman who would divide them as no surgeon ever could. When the culture that had lifted them up inevitably cast them down, they landed in the flophouses of London, where, penniless and starving, they were discovered by Phineas T. Barnum, who packed them off to America along with an assortment of bearded ladies and two-headed calves, albino beauties and dog boys, German midgets and twelve-fingered flute players. Leaving Barnum at the height of their fame to take a last stab at normal life, they settled in North Carolina, where, despite the tensions growing between them, they found, for a time, tranquillity as farmers and slave owners, marrying a pair of sisters and fathering, between them, twenty children. Their peace, however, would prove to be short-lived. As the Civil War drew closer, and their world began to tilt, they would first turn against each other and then, faced with a trial unlike any they had ever known, draw together once more. No longer young, they set off to find the war, and to save what could be saved. It would be there, on that very real battlefield, that Chang would enact his final, terrifying battle with fate. Sweeping and intimate, vibrant and austere, God’s Fool is a novel of soaring ambition and accomplishment from a fiercely gifted storyteller.

Still reeling from the death of his older brother, a sixteen-year-old track star befriends a street-fighting rebel and together they search for redemption amidst the social changes of 1968.

"I have never before read anything except Nabokov’s Speak, Memory that so relentlessly and shrewdly exhausted the kindness and cruelty of recollection’s shaping devices." —Geoffrey Wolff Born in Czechoslovakia, Mark Slouka’s parents survived the Nazis only to have to escape the Communist purges after the war. Smuggled out of their own country, the newlyweds joined a tide of refugees moving from Innsbruck to Sydney to New York, dragging with them a history of blood and betrayal that their son would be born into. From World War I to the present, Slouka pieces together a remarkable story of refugees and war, displacement and denial—admitting into evidence memories, dreams, stories, the lies we inherit, and the lies we tell—in an attempt to reach his mother, the enigmatic figure at the center of the labyrinth. Her story, the revelation of her life-long burden and the forty-year love affair that might have saved her, shows the way out of the maze.

A dozen stories set in New York State, all centered on a lake. In one, a woman rows in the night to meet her lover, in another a man recalls the day his father caught a big fish, or is that a childhood invention? He cannot remember.

A new collection of prophetic essays from one of the sharpest practitioners of the form Mark Slouka writes from a particular vantage point, one invoked by Thoreau, who wished "to improve the nick of time . . . to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future." At this bewildering convergence, Slouka asks us to consider what it means to be human and what we must revive, or reject, in order to retain our humanity in the modern world. Collected over fifteen years, these essays include fascinating explorations of the relationship between memory and history and the nature of "tragedy" in a media-driven culture; meditations on the transcendent "wisdom" of the natural world and the role of silence in an age of noise; and arguments in defense of the political value of leisure time and the importance of the humanities in an age defined by the language of science and industry. Written in Slouka''s supple and unerring prose, celebratory, critical, and passionate, Essays from the Nick of Time reawakens us to the moment and place in which we find ourselves, caught between the fading presence of the past and the neon lure of the future.

Part cultural critique, part call to the ramparts, this funny, eerily disturbing, humanist''s look at the culture of cyberspace suggests that more is going on there than mere on-line communication. Offering a brave new vision of the digital avant-garde, Slouka takes a hard look at this revolution-in-the-making and some of the personalities behind it. Line drawings.

Jon, Ray, Frank e Karen, come dire avere diciassette anni a Brewster, cittadina operaia nello Stato di New York, nell’America di fine anni Sessanta. Un’amicizia vera, spontanea, a tratti disperata, unisce i quattro compagni di liceo, che sognano di riscattarsi dalle miserie delle proprie vite, da famiglie troppo poco disposte ad amarli. A un’età in cui tutto sembra possibile, anche nell’orizzonte limitato di Brewster, i protagonisti cercano una via di salvezza: Ray nell’amore per il fratellino e per Karen, e nella fuga dal padre alcolizzato e violento; Frank nella religione e in una promettente carriera atletica; Jon nella corsa, in cui sfoga la rabbia per una madre che lo considera morto da anni. Per tutti, il grande sogno è la libertà, lo stesso che arroventa la loro epoca, e che nel caso dei quattro ragazzi esigerà un prezzo altissimo. Narrato con un linguaggio semplice, laconico ma ad alta tensione emotiva, il nuovo romanzo di Mark Slouka mette in scena un conflitto interiore degno di una tragedia greca. Pur nella drammaticità dei fatti raccontati, l’autore infonde in queste pagine una luce dolce, la luce del miracolo: quello dell’amicizia in un momento della vita che è ancora l’età delle promesse. Una luce che nessuna tragedia, nessuna delusione, nessuna caduta può spegnere, e che rende questo romanzo così intenso, così appassionato, così necessario.

Un homme, la quarantaine, fils d''émigrés tchèques, se souvient de son enfance passée sur les bords d''un lac dans la région de New York. A travers l''évocation des habitants de cette modeste station de vacances, le narrateur retrace l''histoire et les histoires de cette petite communauté tchèque à laquelle chaque strate de malheurs a apporté son dépôt alluvionnaire d''immigration. Les épisodes de pêche, de baignade insouciante et de paisible observation de la nature nous parlent sans cesse d''autre chose fuites, souffrances, exils, passions, amours contrariées, familles au destin exceptionnel... Le lac est le lien entre les douze récits : tantôt lieu de mystère et d''oubli, tantôt source de vie et retour aux origines. A sa surface se reflète, dans la grande tradition d''Hemingway, la profondeur de la nature humaine.

En mand, der er barn af tjekkiske indvandrere i USA, rejser til Prag for at forsøge at forstå sin mors fortid. En søgen, der fører ham til en tragisk kærlighedshistorie og den heroiske tjekkiske modstandskamp.

" A saga dos irmãos que deram origem ao termo “gêmeos siameses” e, por onde passaram, conheceram fama e miséria, hostilidade e guerra, mas também a força do amor e da amizade. Tudo começa em 1811. A notícia da anomalia dos gêmeos Chang e Eng chega ao rei Rama II, que, temendo ser um prenúncio do fim do mundo, ordena que sejam separados ou mortos. Salvos pela mãe, compartilham uma infância tranquila, até terem suas vidas brutalmente devastadas pela chegada de uma epidemia. Órfãos de pai, os meninos duplos assumem o sustento da família. São convocados pelo novo rei, Rama III, e enviados numa missão diplomática como uma maravilha de sua terra. A prosperidade é pouco a pouco reconstruída, mas uma nova tragédia os joga à teia do mercador oportunista Robert Hunter. Em troca de algumas libras, os jovens se lançam numa jornada pela Europa, onde são recebidos por reis, nobres e aristocratas, e exibidos como monstros em salões e casas de espetáculos diante de plateias lotadas. Em sua longa vida, conhecerão não apenas a exploração, a hostilidade, a traição, a injustiça e a guerra, mas também a força insuperável dos laços invisíveis. Um capricho da natureza é o primeiro romance de Mark Slouka publicado no Brasil. "

Tchécoslovaquie, 1942. Des parachutistes atterrissent secrètement en lisière de la ville. Leur mission : éliminer le " boucher de Prague ", Reinhard Heydrich, architecte de la Solution finale. Ils y parviendront, mais les représailles nazies seront sanglantes : 10 000 Tchèques seront exécutés ou déportés en quelques jours. C''est dans ces circonstances tragiques que la mère du narrateur, Ivana, fait la rencontre de Tomas Bém, l''un des assassins de Heydrich. La mort aux trousses, ces deux êtres vivront une passion amoureuse extraordinaire, dont rien ne pourra jamais chasser les fantômes, ressuscités sous la plume du romancier. De Prague, hier, à New York, aujourd''hui, des limbes du passé aux fragments du présent, le monde de Slouka, que transfigure l''alchimie de l''écriture, est une révélation.

Merveille, présage, signe du destin, acte de Dieu ? Dans la mémoire collective, Chang et Eng, nés reliés par la poitrine, sont des monstres. A leur naissance en 1811, dans la famille d''un pêcheur illettré au cœur de l''ancien royaume de Siam, les accoucheuses s''enfuient en hurlant. Lorsque, dix-sept ans plus tard, leur monde s''écroule au passage d''un typhon, leur mère les vend pour trois cents livres à un trafiquant qui les mène en Europe et les exhibe dans les cours royales et les salons à la mode. Puis arrive le jour où les foules les dédaignent pour d''autres distractions. Chang est amoureux, et son frère tombe malade. Paris puis Londres abritent bientôt leur déchéance dans les quartiers les plus sombres, avant qu''un certain Barnum ne les recueille et les fasse découvrir, comme phénomènes de foire, au Nouveau Monde. Là, s''affranchissant du cirque, les deux frères s''installent en Caroline du Nord et tentent de se construire une vie sereine de propriétaires terriens. Entre amour et haine, le lien du sang est mis à rude épreuve par la guerre de Sécession et le fragile équilibre de deux êtres, obligés de s''entendre pour tous les actes de la vie, bascule : sur les champs de bataille, le destin défera-t-il ce que la nature a irrémédiablement lié ? Mark Slouka traite cette histoire extraordinaire à partir de la seule conscience d''un des deux frères, dans un récit passionnant au style somptueux.

Een kind van Tsjechische migranten in Amerika, nieuwsgierig naar het leven van zijn ouders en zijn verdere voorgeschiedenis, maakt een speurtocht tot in het Tsjechoslowakije van tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog.

Beletristickou formou napsané memoáry zachycují autorův život na americkém kontinentě, jeho návraty do Čech a především zhodnocení komplikovaného vztahu k vlastní k matce. Rodiče Marka Slouky opustili Československo po únorovém puči roku 1948, aby se po mnoha peripetiích usídlili v nevelkém společenství českých exulantů v newyorském Queensu. V centru autorovy pozornosti se ocitají především vazby mezi otcem a matkou, novinářem Zdenkem Sloukou a jeho manželkou Olgou. Právě autorova matka si s sebou přinesla do nového domova těžké citové břemeno: ztrátá osudové lásky ji postupně přivedla k psychickým depresím a posléze až k závažnému oslabení rozumových schopností. Toto onemocnění se projevovalo zlobou a vztekem, které si matka vybíjela na svých nejbližších, tedy i na synovi. Sloukova próza zároveň obsahuje závažné, byť fragmentární svědectví o exilové zkušenosti, která nutně ovlivnila jeho život, přesto mu ale nezabránila, aby neustále hledal prostor z něhož pochází, jenž se zdá někdy natolik vzdálený, že je jen velmi obtížné najít k němu znovu cestu.

Het leven van de 19e-eeuwse Siamese tweeling Chang en Eng, vanuit het perspectief van Chang.