“Books aren’t a means to escape, but a way to more closely observe reality”
Interview with Slovakian writer Barbora Hrínová
While starting off her creative career as a screenwriter and radio documentary maker, Slovakian author Barbora Hrínová has recently met with great success as a writer of fiction, a world she was drawn to as it allowed her to tell narratives in unique and stimulating ways.
As a creative writer she says her primary motivation is, “Probably the effort of saying something with prose that cannot be said in any other way. Also to record something that escapes our usual field of view and falls through various sociological filters. I read a quote somewhere which says that we have literature to specify our human experience. I like that,” she said.
“For me, books aren’t a means to escape but to more closely observe reality.”
In 2020 she published her debut collection of short stories Unicorns, a book that was widely praised for its sensitivity and humanity, and for which she received Slovakia’s most prestigious national literary award Anasoft litera 2021. In the collection Ms Hrínová celebrates the “eternal seekers” of the world, a concept that she says took some years to distil in her mind.
“I thought about the topic of “eternal seekers” for a long time. I was gradually collecting the material for it through people that came into my life or through my own experiences. I believe that until a topic is dissolved in ‘life’ and told via specific details it cannot work in prose. I knew from the beginning that it will be a collection of short stories, their number was formed during the writing process. I created the structure of the short story beforehand, that is a habit from my screenwriting experience,” Ms Hrínová said, speaking ahead of her appearance at the 6th EU-China International Literary Festival.
Having written extensively for screen and radio, Ms Hrínová has been able to draw to some extent on this experience in crafting prose
“In television I usually worked on shows where you are restricted by the medium and form, which is given. For the radio I prepared several radio documentaries which is on the other hand a very free genre which can be approached creatively, join elements of reporting, prose and drama, which I enjoy,” she said.
“Yes, I bring some of this experience into fiction but it‘s more from the human side. There is a character of a screenwriter in one of my short stories for example. The theory of screenwriting is in my subconscious, I have been doing it for a long time and it has definitely made its mark on how I write my stories. I did not use tools of screenwriting intentionally however, I am personally closer to literature.”
While she has been widely lauded for the success of her debut collection, Ms Hrínová feels this debut was not an “early” success as such, and the collection was a long time coming.
“I am happy about the success of my book but I don’t know if it was that early. I have struggled for a long time to write a book, to finally have my debut, find the time, to believe in my abilities. I succeeded only after letting go of all expectations, when I told myself to write what I want, without regard to success or reception,” she said.
“I think this can be used in every stage of creativity or career. To disregard outside influence and tune in to your inner impulse and give it a chance. The writer has to deal with only this and the choice of a publisher. The rest is a collection of coincidences but also luck which in my opinion comes at different times for everyone.”
Speaking on feminism and gender equality issues, Ms Hrínová said prose and art serve a solid purpose as they highlight individual plights, but she says from a wider perspective that after a century of struggles the onus is now firmly on men not women to change attitudes and behaviours.
“Emancipation of women in Europe has been underway for over a century now and has progressed a lot but all of those women had to fight to break strong stereotypes and for their place in the world. In my opinion it is not up to the women anymore but to men and all of society to notice these signals and give them space. Not to take all of women as a whole that needs to be fought for but as individuals, as people,” she said.
“Prose and art are good in the sense that they portray the specific experience of the individual, which in the end is also the goal of women’s emancipation.”