Pišt'anek’s tour de force of 1999 turns car-park attendant and porn king Freddy Piggybank into a national hero, and the unsinkable Rácz aspires to be an oil oligarch, after Slovaks on an Arctic archipelago rise up against oppression. The novel expands from a mafia-ridden Bratislava to the Czech lands dreaming of new imperial glory, and a post-Soviet Arctic hell. Death-defying adventure and psychological drama supersede sheer black humour