Veronika Cosculluela in Košice | Absynt live

We invite you to a discussion with Slovak journalist Veronika Cosculluela on Monday, May 5th from 6:00 PM at the Košice Artforum at Hlavná ul. 87.

In her debut book, The Shrunken World, the author reveals what everyday life looks like behind the walls of Slovak prisons.
What does the first day of a person who has just started serving their sentence look like? And what does someone who is about to be released after years into a world that has changed in the meantime experience? Who are we actually putting behind bars and who are the people who are watching over them? The world behind bars is almost invisible to the public and often shrouded in myths or stereotypes from films and TV series.
The reportage book Shrunken World brings true stories of prisoners, guards, judges, and prison doctors, and shows that this closed world touches many more people than one might think.

Veronika Cosculluela is a Slovak journalist. She grew up in Podkonice near Banská Bystrica. She studied journalism in Bratislava and political science in Grenoble and Belgrade. For ten years, she was mainly a political editor for various Slovak media, most recently at Plus 7 dni. Whenever possible, instead of interviewing politicians, she was drawn to reporting. That's how she got to the topic of imprisonment at a time when a lot of talk began in Slovakia about the conditions of people in prisons during the Covid pandemic. She was interested in how the people who make up this closed system think about this topic. Shrunken World is her debut book.

The discussion is part of the Absynt Live 2025 festival, which was supported by the Art Support Fund - the main partner from public funds.