Abstract
Jana Pátková focuses on the contextualisation of Stanislav Rakús' prose in the Czech reading environment after 1989. His literary work is an example that makes it possible to trace the reception of Slovak literature in the Czech environment. The translation is a mediator in the communication process and literary criticism should play a key role. In the Czech literary context, the reflection of Slovak literature has a specific position. Due to the common past and cultural proximity, Slovak reviewers are represented among the literary critics of contemporary
Slovak literature. Czech literary criticism focuses only on reviewing book titles translated from
Slovak into Czech. The problem of Czech literary critics is their low knowledge of the older authorial context and the history of translation in the past. Slovak literary criticism works with the author's context, but neglects the contextualisation of the book in the Czech reading environment. Mutual cultural relations are perceived as asymmetric. Asymmetry is highlighted by the change in Czech-Slovak biliteracy. Both are reflected in the formation of the literary canon. Making the Slovak literary canon accessible to Czech readers has a different form compared to the form of the Czech literary canon in Slovakia. While Czech readers orient themselves only in the field of popular literature in Slovakia, Slovak readers know fragments from the Czech literary canon, for example Karel Čapek or Božena Němcová. The starting point is the cultural closeness declared over generations, which predestines Slovak literature to a better knowledge than it receives at present. One of the relevant ways to get to know Slovak literature better is by careful selecting a book to translate and making a good translation.