Jana Juráňová: Introspective road movie to normalization

 – Slovakia

Jana Juráňová (* 1957) is a prose writer, playwright and translator. Several of her prose works made it to the top ten of the prestigious national Anasoft litera award (Orodovnice, Žila som s Hviezdoslavom, Lásky nebeské, Nevybavená záležitosť, Naničhodnica), and several were translated into German, English, French, Macedonian and Hungarian.

Together with other women in the art and science fields, she was instrumental in the birth of the feminist project ASPEKT in the early 1990s, which has significantly influenced social and cultural life in Slovakia from its beginnings to the present. In 2019, the president of the Slovak Republic awarded her the Order of Ľudovít Štúr, 1st class, for extraordinary merits in the development of democracy, the protection of human rights and freedoms, and the development of literary field.

Her latest work is the novella Rodinná oslava (Family Celebration, Mladé topole, 2024), in which she explores Slovakian roots, the past (not in historical terms, but rather in psychological and emotional terms), as well as the ways in which the often repressed events from the normalization period of the 1970s and 1980s could be transcribed in people’s destinies and in present-day perception of reality. She is also interested in how the reflection of those times how has been reflected in our view, decision-making, actions, and assessment of current events and phenomena. She is currently preparing a collection of short stories Malibu na Dunaji (Malibu on Donau) with the BRAK publishing house.