Well, the deadline has arrived, and I haven’t even procrastinated too much, because I have already submitted my entry for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for 2010: the novel now titled Bratislava. Three cheers for me! Interestingly, in the process of my revisions I went through a folder I had labelled “Bratislava novel” and found a most interesting file which seemed to be the very first idea I ever had for the novel, and it went like this:

I’m not quite sure what, but I really want to write a novel set in Bratislava. I think it would be one of those slightly chaotic stories with lots of different characters whose stories eventually all intertwine. I guess because Bratislava seems to me a chaotic city with so many stories and different histories.

Now that’s exactly how it ended up, with three characters telling their own stories which eventually intermingle, but to be honest, I had no idea why it was like that: now I know! And I still agree that it’s an appropriate way to tell a story set in Bratislava.

Some of you have been wondering aloud about what the novel’s actually about, and since I have had to write a short summary as a pitch for the ABNA contest, I thought I might share part of it with you here:

Bratislava: A Novel

It’s a decade after the demise of communism and three young people stand in the town square of Bratislava: a Slovak, a Korean and an Australian. Bratislava follows the story of how they met, what this multicultural friendship means to them and how it helps them to find their next steps in life. With fried cheese lunches, art gallery excursions to Vienna and shirtless tram drivers, this mainstream fiction novel reminds us that cultural differences are no barrier to friendship, and that regardless of where you come from, people face the same challenges in life.

Bratislava is set in the Slovak capital of Bratislava while the country is trying to find its Western feet, in the years after the Berlin Wall fell. This unique setting of a city being invaded by Western companies provides the impetus for the arrival of Rebecca, an English teacher helping Slovak employees get up to speed with a language only slowly replacing Russian in their curriculum, and Hyun, a Korean student who is lured to Bratislava by a girl, but stays after falling in love with the Slovak language. Raised in eastern Slovakia, Alenka moved to Bratislava to pursue a teaching career, but abandons this when the salary makes it impossible to pay the rent. With alternating chapters told by Rebecca, Hyun and Alenka, Bratislava follows their journeys as they battle with the usual questions asked by twenty-somethings about settling down, finding the right career and dealing with the ups and downs of love.

Let me know what you think: would you want to read this novel if you read this summary? I really hope so!