The Topography of Pain by Ivan Lesay

Reviewed by Ian Thomas Shaw

Ivan Lesay’s The Topography of Pain is a rare literary debut that weaves philosophical depth with visceral storytelling. Structured as a triptych of novellas—Body: Pro-topia, Tongue: Utopia, and Mind: A-topia—it traverses the past, present, and a dystopian, ultra-materialist future. The novel is a nuanced critique of late Communism in Slovakia and the country’s independence from Czechoslovakia. It is also a lament for the hollow promises of neoliberal capitalism and a meditation on human identity fragmented across generations. Lesay’s work commands attention for its narrative ambition and its probing moral clarity.

The book begins with Nad’a, a young student who turns to sex work after enduring mindless part-time jobs and sexually predatory bosses. Afflicted with aggressive multiple sclerosis, she chooses cryopreservation in the hope of awakening in a future that can cure both her disease and the injustices of her time. In doing so, she must leave her young son, Adam, in the care of her mother. Her novella, Body: Pro-topia, fuses the intimate with the speculative, the corporeal with the metaphysical. Through Nad’a, Lesay confronts readers with the tension between bodily autonomy and societal objectification, memory and oblivion, survival and dignity. The book challenges aspects of modern feminist narrative by refusing moral judgment and rejecting sentimental compromise. It fiercely reminds us that the female body is often the first battleground in any societal upheaval.

The second novella, Tongue: Utopia, shifts to Jaro, Nad’a’s absent father. Once an idealistic, anti-communist journalist, Jaro is caught in the turbulent years surrounding the Velvet Revolution and the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. His disillusionment unfolds with stark restraint, chronicling the erosion of ideals under the weight of market forces and political expediency. The language he once used to seek truth becomes, ultimately, a currency he trades to serve a brutal oligarch. In Jaro, Lesay captures the slow betrayal of a generation—those who experienced the euphoria of 1989 only to be silenced by a new orthodoxy: profit.

Completing the triptych is Adam, Nad’a’s son, raised by his grandmother in a post-transition Slovakia where hypercapitalism reigns and the human being has been expunged from the centre of societal purpose. In Mind: A-topia, Lesay propels the reader into a near-future saturated with algorithmic commerce, moral nihilism, and the intoxicating yet empty euphoria of success. Adam, a tech-savvy wheeler-dealer, is a product of everything that came before: his mother’s disappearance, his grandfather’s silence, and his society’s abandonment. As he spirals into cynicism, even love—most hauntingly portrayed in his relationship with Inge, a beautiful woman with a possibly scientifically reconstituted memory and personality—fails to anchor him. Lesay’s language grows feverish here, outpacing its own logic, as if mirroring Adam’s descent into existential oblivion.

What unites these narratives is not merely genealogy, though the intergenerational links lend the work poignancy and tragic irony. Rather, it is Lesay’s unflinching exploration of pain—not as a single trauma, but as a topography, a landscape to be crossed again and again, through bodies, tongues, and minds. Here, pain is not a metaphor; it is the condition of modern existence.

Stylistically, Lesay proves himself as versatile as he is bold. His prose moves fluidly between dystopian fiction, domestic realism, and political commentary with unnerving ease. The deliberate shifts in tone—from the lush, almost decadent lyricism of Nad’a’s chapters, to the restrained sobriety of Jaro’s, and finally the frenetic urgency of Adam’s—intensify both the emotional and intellectual impact of the work.

Yet what is most impressive in The Topography of Pain is Lesay’s resistance to despair. Despite the pervasive disillusionment, a human core remains—fragile, often wounded, but enduring. In a literary landscape so often dominated by ironic detachment and self-referential fragmentation, Lesay offers a novel that is sincere, bold, and devastatingly human.

The Topography of Pain was translated by Jonathan Gresty and published by Guernica World Editions.