Glagoslav Publications Announces the Publication of the Memoir "On the Road to Freedom," by Janko Jesenský in the English Translation

London, United Kingdom, December 03, 2023 --(PR.com)-- Summary:

This book, newly translated into English by Charles S. Kraszewski, is unique among the memoirs that came out of the First World War, as it chronicles not desperate charges or trench warfare, but the daily life of Austrian prisoners of war taken into Russian captivity at the very outset of the conflict. Of course, the reader will find more than one exciting passage in On the Road to Freedom, from eyewitness accounts of the Soviet Revolution in Kiev and Saint Petersburg to the heroic and bloody route cut by the Czechoslovak Legions through Red Army forces as the former POWs make their way across Siberia to Vladivostok and the long steamboat journey home, where they will aid in establishing the newly independent Republic of Czechoslovakia. But the most engaging aspect of On the Road to Freedom, and the poems that Jesenský composed during his Russian captivity (a generous selection of which are appended to these memoirs), is the palpable experience of the daily life of the POW — far from home, cold, and hungry. Besides their value as literary texts, Janko Jesenský’s wartime writings in verse and prose are a welcome addition to the English library of early twentieth century history. They provide a fresh, Slovak perspective on the "Great War," the Russian Revolution, the establishment of the Czechoslovak state, and the situation of the smaller Central European nations on the chessboard of politics dominated by great powers.

About The Author:

Janko Jesenský (1874–1945). Poet, prose writer, translator and Slovak statesman. Jesenský was the scion of the noble Slovak family Jesenský z Horného Jasena. Like his father, Jen Baltazár Jesenský-Gasparé and brothers Fedor and Vladimír, he was active in the propagation of Slovak culture and language during the difficult years of the Habsburg Empire, when Slovakia was subjected to strong Magyarising pressure. Jesenský is well known as a poet, having published nine collections of verse, including Zo zajatia [From Captivity, 1918], which chronicle his four years as a Russian prisoner of war and member of the Czechoslovak Legions, two plays (unpublished in his lifetime) and eleven works in prose, including his memoirs Cestou k slobode [On the Road to Freedom, 1933], an important eyewitness account of the First World War, the establishment of the Czechoslovak Legions and the Czechoslovak National Council, the Russian Revolution and subsequent Russian Civil War. His translations from Russian include Alexander Pushkin’s masterpiece Eugene Onegin. In the newly established First Czechoslovak Republic he served as county governor (župan) in Rimavská Sobota and Nitra, and later in the regional-national government in Bratislava, eventually becoming Vice President of the Regional Government for Slovakia. During the Second World War, at the breakup of Czechoslovakia and the establishment of the collaborationist Slovak Republic of Monsignor Tiso, he retired from public life but continued to compose anti-Fascist poetry, much of which was broadcast from the free Czechoslovak radio service in London.

During the 1930s he spent much of his time in the village of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, in the province of Essonne, where he owned a cottage. Here he rejected urban civilisation, promoting a lifestyle that was closer to nature. He stayed in France during the German occupation and died in 1942 in the village of Chabris, where he and his wife had escaped as refugees. Living on the border of the Free Zone, he had been actively publishing anti-Nazi pamphlets until the very end.

Title: On the Road to Freedom
Author: Janko Jesenský
Translator: Charles S. Kraszewski
Publisher: Glagoslav Publications
Language: English
ISBN: 9781804841136, 9781804841143, 9781804841150
Extent: 485 pages
Price: €22.99 (PB), €27.99 (HB), €9.95 (e-book)
Format: paperback, hardback, e-book

Review copies are available upon request.