Horses exercise a great pull on the human imagination, but I like to think Slovaks have a unique imaginative relationship to them. My guess it comes from the commingled wonder and horror of the nomadic tribes who first galloped in from the east a thousand years ago on these great, elegant, fleeting beasts—tribes we now call the Hungarians; and then successive mounted invasions by Tartars and Turks. A distinguishing feature of the Slovak fairy tale is the tátoš or flying horse, perhaps a case where envy turns into art.
In the last Slovak novel in English I reviewed, Three Chestnut Horses, the eponymous creatures are the major symbols of the unfolding human story, and poetic justice is wrought upon the principal villain when a horse he has abused too long finally exacts revenge. In the novel under consideration here, with another plain allusion to the horse in its title, the story begins, rather than ending, with death-by-horse. But it is neither revenge nor justice visited upon an evildoer. Instead it is the chosen method of suicide by the protagonist…
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