The End of Freddy

Rivers of Babylon #3

by Peter Pišťanek, Donald Rayfield (Editor), Peter Petro (Translator)

Pišt'anek’s tour de force of 1999 turns car-park attendant and porn king Freddy Piggybank into a national hero, and the unsinkable Rácz aspires to be an oil oligarch after Slovaks on an Arctic archipelago rise up against oppression. The novel expands from a mafia-ridden Bratislava to the Czech lands dreaming of new imperial glory, and a post-Soviet Arctic hell. Death-defying adventure and psychological drama supersede sheer black humour.

Genres: Fiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published November 6, 1999

About the author

Pišťanek was a prose writer who managed to come out with a new type of prose at the beginning of the 1990's. He began publishing at the end of the 1980's in Slovenské pohľady, the best literary magazine in those years. His novelistic debut, Rivers of Babylon was an unusual success with the readers as well as the critics. The author described what was then a non-traditional topic for the Slovak literature - the Bratislava underground - using very expressive language and a variety of stylistic levels. The characters that fill his novel are small-time crooks and bigime entrepreneurs-privatizers as well as prostitutes. The only ambition of these people is to make their life more pleasant which, in their understanding, means to cheat, exploit, or destroy the others. In this world, one person manages to make his way to the top, a man from the village, the main character Racz, due to his unswerving pursuit of power and money. Somewhere in the background of these activities, the revolutionary changes of 1989 (the break-up of the Soviet Empire, the liberation of Eastern Europe) unfold. Inspiration for this novel comes from the para-literature and Pišťanek stressed the rectilinear narrative and fast-paced plot. While he presented the situation in an impersonal, laconic manner, he was precise in his analysis of the actual situation, even though the subject of his work may have been rather bizarre and grotesque. The Young Dônč is a collection of three long short stories: Debutante, The Young Dônč, and Music. In the story The Young Dônč we encounter the topic of the degeneration of the Dônč family caused not only by alcoholism of all its members, but also by its accompanying feature: the total ignorance and disinterest in anything that goes on outside the territory of their own home. The author parodied here some texts of previous periods, nevertheless, his irony was aimed at the present. Even his story Music, with its grotesque elements, is a precise sociological probe of the "normalized" life of the Seventies. Pišťanek followed-up his successful novel by publishing Rivers of Babylon 2, or Wooden Village, and Rivers of Babylon 3, or Fredy's End. This trilogy is so unusual, provocative and controversial that it will take Slovak criticism and literature in general some time to come to terms with it. One should also not overlook his fascinating The Tales of Vlado the Great and The New Tales of Vlado the Great. These are satirical tales that combine the charm of Hassidic fairy tales, Sufi instructional tales, and Slovak folktales with Buddhist koans in
a transcendent manner, so that even the intended target was said to have enjoined reading them.

Rivers of Babylon (1991), The Young Dônč (Mladý Dônč, 1993), Rivers of Babylon 2, or Wooden Village (Rivers of Babylon 2, alebo Drevená dedina, 1994), The Tales of Vlado the Great (Skazky o Vladovi, 1995), The New Tales of Vlado the Great (Nové skazky o Vladovi, 1998), Rivers of Babylon 3, or Fredy's End (Rivers of Babylon 3, alebo Fredyho koniec, 1999)

Reviews

[lukas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zaujímavé ukončenie trilógie, bol som skeptický zo slovenského súostrovia a cisárstva ale nakoniec to bolo fajn.

[Diana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Autor upustil od budovania charakterov postáv a typického bratislavského prostredia. Niť pornografie, sociálneho prostredia a situačnej komiky ubúdala, až napokon v závere celkom vymizla.
Pišťanek sa zameral na akčnú naráciu a fiktívny svet slovenského súostrovia, čím stratil nadväznosť na prvé dve knihy trilógie. Škoda. Asi by som Fredyho koniec hodnotila inak, keby bol standalone.
Vadiť čitateľovi môže aj množstvo českých kapitol, t.j. písaných v češtine, čo môže niekomu robiť problém.

[Nina Marcineková]

rivers of babylon #1 je Pišťankov magnum opus, neoplatí sa to porovnávať s ničím iným z jeho tvorby, tak je to geniálne. tým pádom rivers of babylon nie je pre mňa trilógiou, ak by sme to však tak mali vnímať, trojka sa celkom ťahala. džundžianske súostrovie bolo aj vtipne vykreslené, no boj o jeho samostatnosť bol už ku koncu naozaj ťažkopádny. na prasačiny som si zvykla a postupne celkom otravovali. ani nie preto, že boli prasačinové, skôr ma to už potom unavovalo, prvotné zhnusenie sa vytratilo a nasledovala nuda z neustáleho opakovania. joj ale sme my slováci ľudia, všetko si dosereme. napísať takú knihu ako rivers of babylon #1 je proste dvojsečná zbraň.

[Patrick Al-de Lange · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of the action in this book shifts from Bratislava to some fantastical archipelago populated with two mythical peoples. The majority of the focus is on Freddy and Urban Video, with Freddy transforming from Europe's porn king to rebel leader.

What first attracted me to this trilogy was the characters together with the setting; lower-class lives in Bratislava, which went all topsy turvy when the fantasy land was introduced. However, the characters are strong enough to survive this seismic shift and keep the story compelling nonetheless.

[Martin Kaigl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trocha iny pristup ako v predchádzajúcich dvoch knihach....ale stale velmi dobra karikatura slovenskej mentality...

[Lani Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

First half was a bit messy but comes together nicely towards the end. Solid political satire. I feel he could have got another 50 pages into the storyline without having a detrimental impact.

[Kristína · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trošku mi to trvalo, ale aj tak to bolo super!

[Terézia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bolo to také zvláštne, trošku som sa musela nútiť do čítania. Celý príbeh o Džundži bol predovšetkým absurdný a až potom trošku vtipný. Mám pocit, že táto trilógia strácala na kvalite každým ďalším dielom.

[!Tæmbuŝu]

Reviewed by The Complete Review

[Harry Rutherford · Rating 3 out of 5]

The third in the Rivers of Babylon trilogy. I quite enjoyed it, but I read quite a lot of it when I was half-asleep, which is never the best way to do a book justice.