Eternal Traffic

by Mila Haugová

Bilingual English / Slovak edition

Translated & introduced by James Sutherland-Smith with Katarína Soltis-Smith.

Part of our Arc Translations series edited by Jean Boase-Beier

Mila Haugová has written a moving book about the farewell of loved ones and the slipping away of one's own life. The starting point is a double loss: her mother dies and her lover goes his own way. During her dead mother's childhood and distant past, the loved ones have faced a hoped-for future. Now only a reduced daily life remains, shot through with ever present memories. Haugová overlays the departed, and now recalculated, images of childhood and days spent with her lover. Is it possible to find some memory of lost warmth in this cold world?

Re-encounter and farewells are one in Haugová's poetry: there are intimate companions in the absence of loved ones, in the acceptance of their disappearance, which over time develop a cathartic force that makes possible new love.

Pbk: 9781911469605
Hbk: 9781911469612
Published February 2020