In poems praised by The New York Times for their liminal spaces and hybrid beings, Eva Luka’s work moves through borderlands — and with The Minotaur’s Daughter it has crossed a more literal frontier. The English-language selection of her poetry, translated from the Slovak by James Sutherland-Smith and published by Seagull Books with the support of Slovakia’s SLOLIA grant programme, has been named one of The New York Times’s Best Poetry Books of 2025. Since 2005 she has published under the name Eva Luka, producing a distinctive body of work that includes Diabloň, Havranjel, Pani Kurčaťová and Jazver. In 2023 she published a Slovak translation of Takashi Hiraide’s novel The Guest Cat. The inclusion of The Minotaur’s Daughter in The New York Times’s Best Poetry of 2025 marks not only a personal milestone, but also a rare moment of international visibility for contemporary Slovak poetry.

Source: International New York Times December 31, 2025 18:45 UTC