In her book Čepiec (The Bonnet), Katarína Kucbelová deliberately and to great effect blurs the boundaries between genres as she searches for answers about her personal, family, and cultural identity. At the center of her exploration stands the čepiec, a traditional bonnet once worn by married women in Slovakia from their wedding day until death – a kind of visual life story of its wearer. Seeking to look beneath the surface of stylized, “fake” folklore, the author–narrator–reporter travels to “the region beneath Kráľova hoľa – the symbol of Slovakia,” where she meets Iľka, one of the last women in the area who still knows how to make a čepiec by hand. From her conversations with this eighty-year-old woman and her neighbors, fragments of memory, walks through the village, and observations of the bonnet-making process, no simple answers emerge, only new questions and doubts. Yet it is precisely through these pointed questions and keen observations that we come closer to the essence of collective identity’s fluidity, to recognizing historical and familial traumas, and perhaps even to feeling the healing power of sharing the female experience. Kucbelová’s text is deeply rooted in the Slovak context, yet thanks to its masterful literary treatment of the universal theme of identity-seeking, it speaks equally to readers beyond Slovakia’s borders. The existing translations and international literary awards attest to this. By nominating Čepiec for the Visegrad Literary Award, we hope to encourage its translation into further languages.
Katarína Kucbelová is a poet and prose writer. She has published five books of poetry, the novella “Čepiec” (2019) and the novel “Modrosleposť” (2023). Both books have been nominated for several literary awards. “Čepiec” won the Panta Rhei Awards Literary Academy Prize, and the Tatra Bank Foundation Prize, and was shortlisted for the Angelus Prize. The first three of her poetry collections, “Duály” (2019), “Šport” (2006), and “Malé veľké mesto” (2008), were reissued in 2020. Her book of poetry “K bielej” (2022) won the Zlatá Vlna Award, the Václav Burian Award, and the Tatra Bank Foundation Award. Her books have been translated into several languages. Most translated book of her Čepiec was yet translated into Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Latvian, German and English language and staged in Zvolen theatre.
