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Scvrknutý svet
Shrunken world
Event by: Absynt - príbehy a reportáže, Mestské divadlo Žilina
Location: Žilina Town Theatre, Horný Val 1, Žilina
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Talks & discussions
About event
At the end of the month, the Reading Room will be visited by journalist Veronika Cosculluela, who will present her debut book The Shrinking World from the Cursed Reporters edition of the Žilina publishing house Absynt. The report brings life behind the walls of Slovak prisons closer and, through the stories of prisoners, guards, judges and doctors, reveals places that are not intended for the public.
What happens in the head of a person who arrives in prison, where he is to spend several long years? And what's in the mind of a prisoner who is about to go out into the world? Does he have any idea how much the world has changed while he was locked up?
All the ideas we have about prisons come from books, movies or series. It's a closed world, but it affects a lot of people - the Corps of Prison and Judicial Guards employs around eight thousand people, around ten thousand of them are behind bars, four hundred of them are released every month, and that's not even counting the families who are fundamentally affected by life behind bars. Prisoners are mostly written about in the media at Christmas, or when some scandal or escape is revealed. At the same time, there are many questions to which we would like to know the answers: What does the life of families who have a relative in prison look like? How do they deal with it in their environment - at work, in the city, in the village? What is life like for former prisoners in Slovakia? What chance do they have to reintegrate into society? Who are we putting behind bars and who are the people watching over them?
Veronika Cosculluela is a Slovak journalist. She grew up in Podkonice near Banská Bystrica. She studied journalism in Bratislava and political science in Grenoble and Belgrade. For ten years, she was mainly a political editor for various Slovak media, most recently at Plus 7 dni. Whenever there was an opportunity, instead of talking to politicians, she was drawn to reporting. That's how she got to the topic of prison at a time when Slovakia started to talk a lot about the conditions of people in prisons during the covid pandemic. She was interested in how the people who make up this closed system think about this topic. Szvrknutý svet (Absynt 2025) is her debut book.
What happens in the head of a person who arrives in prison, where he is to spend several long years? And what's in the mind of a prisoner who is about to go out into the world? Does he have any idea how much the world has changed while he was locked up?
All the ideas we have about prisons come from books, movies or series. It's a closed world, but it affects a lot of people - the Corps of Prison and Judicial Guards employs around eight thousand people, around ten thousand of them are behind bars, four hundred of them are released every month, and that's not even counting the families who are fundamentally affected by life behind bars. Prisoners are mostly written about in the media at Christmas, or when some scandal or escape is revealed. At the same time, there are many questions to which we would like to know the answers: What does the life of families who have a relative in prison look like? How do they deal with it in their environment - at work, in the city, in the village? What is life like for former prisoners in Slovakia? What chance do they have to reintegrate into society? Who are we putting behind bars and who are the people watching over them?
Veronika Cosculluela is a Slovak journalist. She grew up in Podkonice near Banská Bystrica. She studied journalism in Bratislava and political science in Grenoble and Belgrade. For ten years, she was mainly a political editor for various Slovak media, most recently at Plus 7 dni. Whenever there was an opportunity, instead of talking to politicians, she was drawn to reporting. That's how she got to the topic of prison at a time when Slovakia started to talk a lot about the conditions of people in prisons during the covid pandemic. She was interested in how the people who make up this closed system think about this topic. Szvrknutý svet (Absynt 2025) is her debut book.