On the Other Hand

On the Other Hand is a short story collection by the award-winningSlovak author, Pavol Rankov. As the title implies, there is a duality to the stories in this volume – half of them are set in contemporary times and places and cover subjects such as immigration, refugees, drug use, and mental illness. The other half are set in distant lands with palaces and kings, and they read like fairy tales in which people dig to the other side of the Earth, build cities for the virtuous, and live alternate versions of their lives. The common thread in all of them is that Rankov takes a seemingly ordinary situation and pushes it to an extreme, and in doing so, he reveals some truth about human nature.

Reading Pavol Rankov’s short stories causes inner turmoil—it’s impossible
just to put the book down and go do something else. It could be
because his characters remind us of ourselves, with our desires, feelings,
and anxieties—except that they always go a step further than we’d dare.
Milena Schefs, Nowe książki

At the center are ordinary interpersonal relationships—“tight” relationships which arouse curiosity, attraction, jealousy, provocation… But it wouldn’t be Rankov if genres such as mystery, sci-fi, psychological drama, or thriller weren’t poking out between the lines.
Barbora Škovierová, Hospodárske noviny

That which I have called the philosohpical secret in Rankov’s work lies in unanswered and perhaps unanswerable puzzles that all good authors create out of banal situations or anecdotes. All of a sudden an anecdote grows to terrifying proportions, its resolution causes existential anxiety.
Adam Bžoch, Dotyky