The life and work of the Slovak novelist Gejza Vámoš represent the multiculturalism of early twentieth-century Central Europe. His writing is influenced by his background as a triple minority (a Jewish-Hungarian-Slovak) in interwar Czechoslovakia, although not all of it overtly engages with questions of Jewish identity. Paul Selver, the first English translator of the Czech authors Jaroslav Hašek and Karel Čapek, noted in 1934 that the problem of Slovak writers in this period “would appear to be that of shaping an adequate medium for what they have to say”, mentioning Vámoš’s best-known novel,
Atómy boha[
God’sAtoms, 1928] as an example of an author “endeavouring to enlarge the scope of Slovak literature by copying foreign models” (1934, 702).
Vámoš was born into a
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Citation: Sabatos, Charles. "Gejza Vámoš". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 December 2020 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13635, accessed 26 November 2024.]
