Miroslav Šustek (born 1947) was a Slovak horror and

ghost story A ghost story is any piece of fiction, or drama, that includes a ghost, or simply takes as a premise the possibility of ghosts or characters' belief in them."Ghost Stories" in Margaret Drabble (ed.), ''Oxford Companion to English Literature''. ...

writer. Despite his forty years of prolific writing, his debut short story collection, '' Nie ste vy náhodou ten chýrny pán Rafin?'' (Are You By Any Chance The Famous Mr Rafin?) was only first published in 2007.

Biography

Miroslav Šustek was born on January 4, 1947, in

Žilina Žilina (; ; ; ; Names of European cities in different languages: U-Z#Z, names in other languages) is a city in north-western Slovakia, around from the capital Bratislava, close to both the Czech and Polish borders. It is the List of cities ...

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

(now

Slovakia Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the west, and the Czech Republic to the northwest. Slovakia's m ...

). He has spent the majority of his life in his hometown. Having become partially disabled at a young age, Šustek devoted his life to writing, his stories initially heavily influenced by classics of the

macabre In works of art, the adjective macabre ( or ; ) means "having the quality of having a grim or ghastly atmosphere". The macabre works to emphasize the details and symbols of death. The term also refers to works particularly gruesome in natu ...

, horror and

genres, later adding elements of humour and

parody A parody is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satire, satirical or irony, ironic imitation. Often its subject is an Originality, original work or some aspect of it (theme/content, author, style, e ...

to the mix.Šustek, Miroslav. Nie ste vy náhodou ten slávny pán Rafin?. Artis Omnis, 2007, p. 4-5

Writing career

Despite having written more than a thousand short stories in more than forty years of continuous writing, none of them were published until 2000, when Šustek met the future publishers of the '' Hlboký hrob'' online horror magazine. Two of his stories published in ''Hlboký hrob'' were later included in the '' Neželané dedičstvo po neobľúbenom strýkovi'' (An Unwanted Inheritance Left By An Unpopular Uncle) anthology in 2006. Šustek's debut short story collection was subsequently published in 2007.

Works

* '' Nie ste vy náhodou ten slávny pán Rafin?'' (

2007 2007 was designated as the International Heliophysical Year and the International Polar Year. Events January * January 1 **Bulgaria and Romania 2007 enlargement of the European Union, join the European Union, while Slovenia joins the Eur ...

)

References

External links

Miroslav Šustek biography at his co-publisher's website (in Slovak)

An article on Šustek from the ''Host'' literary magazine (in Czech)

Partial bibliography at legie.info (in Czech)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sustek, Miroslav 1947 births 2015 deaths 20th-century male writers 20th-century short story writers 20th-century Slovak writers 21st-century male writers 21st-century short story writers 21st-century Slovak writers Adventure fiction Ghost story writers Male short story writers People from Žilina Slovak horror writers Slovak male writers Slovak-language writers