Zuska Kepplová is a Slovak author, editor, and political commentator for the Slovakian daily newspaper SME. In 2011, her book Buchty švabachom was published in her home country, winning the Ján Johanides Prize and becoming shortlisted for the Anasoft Litera Prize, Slovakia’s most prestigious literary prize. Now, twelve years later, Buchty švabachom is available in English as The Moon in Foil, translated by Magdalena Mullek. In this novel, organized into two sections—beginning with “You Can Be Not Afraid,” which highlights stories from Petra in Paris, Anka in London, Mika in Helsinki, Natália in Paris, and Juliana in Budapest, followed by “Trianon-Delta,” which follows an unnamed couple, first from one person’s perspective and then the other’s—Kepplová explores what it means to go out into the world, to seek out something more beyond what is comfortable and known, and to grapple with expectation and disappointment. The young people of this book, fueled by an excitement born of the freedom to pursue new options and by the hope of finding some deeper fulfillment in a post-communist Europe, discover lackluster, mundane realities that weigh them down. Sure, they can visit famous museums and walk among icons of pop culture and splendid architectural beauty. But they must return to bleak, soulless housing, which they can barely afford, then wake and return to menial, meaningless jobs that offer just enough to keep them stuck in their wretched cycle.
In a chapter called “Tate Gallery Blues,” Kepplová writes: “After coming to London, Anka quickly tried to build new everydayness. It started when she opened the door to her apartment, took a breath of the air inside, and made the decision to get out of there as soon as possible. She put her suitcase and her handbag into her future room. There was nothing in it except a bed, a closet with no shelves, and a mirror with a stain next to it…. In between setting down her suitcase and tomorrow’s job search was a space she didn’t know how to fill.”
Zuska, who lives in Slovakia, was kind enough to answer some questions over WhatsApp. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Monika Dziamka
Why did you write the book in this way, in these particular sections with these particular characters?
Zuska Kepplová
I was collecting material at different places—like fragments of stories, dialogues, situations—and I kind of ended up liking the way that I had assembled it. I decided that I’m going to have geography [as the focus, for the first section]. It was, for me, important to have these places and then to somehow communicate the idea that wherever you go, the situations are, in a way, very similar.
These stories don’t follow the classic narrative structure that gives the reader a sense of accomplishment, even achievement or deeper understanding. However, I believe that the mission of these stories is to transmit a certain sensibility. The characters are interchangeable; they are simply members of a generation that “entered the world.” This world is full of details—meetings and more meetings. There is a sense of repetition and endless addition. I did not allow for closure or a feeling of completeness because I believed there was none.
The category of ethnicity is studied across the first part of the book. For Eastern Europeans, who were born in late socialist societies and grew up after the revolutions, [this label] is a novelty. They were not used to thinking about themselves as “Eastern Europeans” and dealing with prejudices, their own or of others. Entering the free world thus also means entering a hierarchy or a web of relations of power. I tried to capture that throughout the stories.
Monika Dziamka
How does the second section, “Trianon-Delta,” connect to the first section?
Zuska Kepplová
I didn’t feel like these people [in this section] needed names. In a way, it can be read as a letter [between the two main characters of “Trianon-Delta”]. There are other characters named here, but for these particular two lovers, I felt like okay, they are addressing each other here. There’s this idea of being close while being separate. So I feel like they don’t really need names. The idea is that the first section is way more concrete [and specific]. Then the second section tries to take it to a more metaphorical level. I’m dealing more with relationships. It’s not just that you can be anywhere [to experience what the characters go through], but also you can be with anyone—that people are not actually that special and that they can be replaced with other people.
I believe that this section conveys well a [sense of] disenchantment and loss of direction. It resonated well with many readers who had a similar experience working and studying abroad. This book was written in 2011 out of material collected [in the context of] pre-Brexit Britain and pre-EU Slovakia.
Monika Dziamka
From a craft perspective, how do you organize your writing to keep all of these characters and story lines separate?
Zuska Kepplová
I didn’t write it chronologically. You know, I felt like first I came up with the cities where these stories are going to take place. And then I was writing number one for Petra in Paris. I started writing Anka in London. [When I was finished writing the book] I reordered it a little bit for the reader. And the last section, “Trianon-Delta,” I remember I started writing in English for some reason. So even the Slovak that is used there is a translation from [more complex] English into a kind of simplistic language because I wanted it to be a little bit [more casual], that they would write to each other in this way. It’s just the language that [these characters] organize their thoughts in. And then the idea of translation—somehow, I thought that it also gives you a little bit of the feeling of alienation through your own maternal language, that you’re losing these nuances and it feels that [something] must be lost.
Monika Dziamka
How do your personal experiences influence or appear in the book?
Zuska Kepplová
Of course I use my experiences, in pieces of dialogue, gestures, stories. I feel like now I couldn’t really dissociate reality from this fixed version. Yeah, it’s even influenced how I think about my past—I really cannot tell one from another now, the book and the reality.
Monika Dziamka
Is there any advice you would give to young travelers today, perhaps to your own son who may wish to live abroad at some point?
Zuska Kepplová
I think the kids now are much smarter. They don’t need my advice! They’re already much more worldly and experienced.
Monika Dziamka
Tell me about your experience working with a translator. Were there certain passages or chapters that were especially challenging or had some unique issue in translation?
Zuska Kepplová
[Magdalena] Mullek is a Slovak speaker and an experienced translator so we did not have many exchanges. But we were struggling to translate the Slovak title, which is Buchty švabachom. It is a reference to a moment in the book when one of the seasonal workers says he wished he could have “sweet buns” tattooed on his belly in a Gothic font. Finally, we came up with a simpler yet still poetic title.Monika Dziamka
What do you hope American readers get from this book? Is this hope different for readers of other countries?
Zuska Kepplová
I remember when the book came out, it really intimately connected with readers who had had a similar experience of working abroad, for seasonal work during the summer or when studying abroad. They felt like okay, we can add more stories here, add ad infinitum. So it really connected to a particular generation in Slovakia. In that way, maybe [the book] works in, like, an ethnographic or sociological document of a certain era.
I would be really curious to see it through the eyes of an American. I would be really curious to know how it works for a reader from a slightly different cultural context.
FICTION
The Moon in Foil
By Zuska Kepplová
Translated from the Slovak by Magdalena Mullek
Seagull Books
Published December 20, 2023
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