Marek Vadas (1971) studied aesthetics and Slovak language and literature at Comenius University in Bratislava. A regular visitor to equatorial Africa, he has become an adviser to the king of Nyenjei, a small kingdom in Cameroon. He is the author of a novel, several collections of short stories, including Liečiteľ (The Healer, 2006), Čierne na čiernom (Black on Black, 2013), Zlá štvrť (A Bad Neighborhood, 2019), and Šesť cudzincov (Six Strangers, 2021), as well as several books for children, including Útek, 2016 (The Escape, 2018). His fiction combines traditional African narrative forms with European modernism. In his often ironic and absurd stories, set against the backdrop of local culture and customs, reality mingles with dreams, the living with the dead, and the sacred with the profane. Vadas’s books have been translated into Czech, Ukrainan, German, Hungarian, Slovene, Polish, and English. His collection The Healer won the Anasoft Litera prize in 2007.