Other thoughts

A young girl experiencing her first relationship who has a nagging feeling this isn't how it should be; a mother who terrorises her daughter with food; a daughter who terrorises her mother with food; an expat whose sweet dolce vita in Italy is soured by being forbidden to speak to the locals; a mistress who wishes she had entirely different thoughts; a lower secondary school teacher who heroically faces her pupils every day; grandfathers who stare at little girls on the street and on public transport – yes, the grandfathers, they're a must; and finally, a psychiatrist who thinks he's seen it all.

Ivana Dobrakovová (1982) is a writer and translator. She has translated works from Italian and French by authors such as Elena Ferrante, Veronica Raimo, Giulia Caminito, Emmanuel Carrère, Marie NDiaye, Simone de Beauvoir and Amélie Nothomb. She made her literary debut in 2009 with the short story collection Prvá smrť v rodine (The First Death in the Family). In 2010, she published her first novel, Bellevue, followed in 2013 by another collection of short stories, Toxo. In 2018, her collection of five prose pieces, Matky a kamionisti (Mothers and Lorry Drivers), won the European Union Prize for Literature (EUPL). Her novel Pod slnkom Turína (Under the Turin Sun) was published in 2021, and in 2024, her essay on writing, A čo sa vám stalo? (And What Happened to You?), was released. She has been nominated for the Anasoft Litera award five times. Her books have been translated into twelve languages. She lives in Turin.