The Equestrienne

It is 1984 and a small town somewhere in the east of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic is in the firm grip of totalitarianism. Karolina, a teenage runaway who never knew her father and who grew up in an untraditional family full of strange women, discovers a riding school on the edge of town. There, she gets to know the physically handicapped Romana and Matilda, a rider and trainer. Matilda begins to coach the two girls in the art of trick riding, an almost unknown sporting discipline, and they found a successful trick riding team. However, the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 and the subsequent arrival of capitalism threatens to destroy the riding school. With dictatorship of the proletariat being replaced by the dictatorship of money, the team has to turn professional and the girls are expected to be absolutely perfect in their performaces. All of a sudden there is no room for the physically handicapped Romana and the unruly Karolina... The Equestrienne is a novel about the desire to realise one's girlish dreams in spite of totalitarianism; it is a celebration of friendship between women and also a bitter acknowledgement that the desire for power can destroy any relationship. This title is one of eight comprising Parthian's ambitious Parthian Europa Carnivale writing in translation project.

Uršuľa Kovalyk (1969) is a fiction writer and playwright. She is the co-founder and director of Theatre Without a Home, which works with the homeless and the disabled. She is a leading voice in the contemporary feminist literary discourse in Slovakia. Her work focuses on female characters often living unfulfilled and austere lives under the pressure of a patriarchal society, and more recently, on environmental issues and aging. Her works have been translated into ten languages.