Winner of the Egon Hostovský Prize as the best Czech book of the year, this epic novel powerfully captures the sense of dislocation that followed the Czechs’ newfound freedom in 1989. More than just the story of its young protagonist—who is part businessman, part gang member, part drifter—it is a novel that includes terrifying dream scenes, Czech and American Indian legends, a nightmarish Eastern European flea market, comic scenes about the literary world, and an oddly tender story of the love between the protagonist and his spiritual sister.
Czechoslovakia, 1968. Soviet troops have just invaded the country and, for the young orphan Ilya, life is suddenly turned on its head. At first there is relief that the mean-spirited nuns who run the orphanage have been driven out by the Communists, but as the children are left to fend for themselves, order and routine quickly give way to brutality and chaos, and Ilya finds himself drawn into the violence, both committing murder in order to save his best friend and forced to witness the death of his disabled brother. When the troops return, the orphans are given military training and, with his first-hand knowledge of the local terrain, Ilya becomes a guide to a Soviet tank commander, leading him ever deeper into a macabre world of random cruelty, moral compromise and lasting shame.
'The devil had his workshop in Belarus. That's where the deepest graves are. But no one knows about it.' A young man grows up in a town with a sinister history. The concentration camp may have been liberated years ago, but its walls still cast their long shadows and some of the inhabitants are quite determined to not to allow anyone to forget.When the camp is marked for demolition, one of the survivors begins a campaign to preserve it, quickly attracting donations from wealthy benefactors, a cult-like following of young travellers, and a steady stream of tourists buying souvenir t-shirts.But before long, the authorities impose a brutal crack-down, leaving only an 'official' memorial and three young collaborators whose commitment to the act of remembering will drive them ever closer to the evils they hoped to escape.Bold, brilliant and blackly comic, The Devil's Workshop paints a deeply troubling portrait of a country dealing with its ghosts and asks: at what point do we consign the past to history?
A brutally funny, carnivalesque novel about love, death, and survival, from the Czech Republic's greatest living author Tab, an itinerant Czech actor, travels around Europe on the theater circuit with his partner, Sońa, and their two young sons, attending festivals and performing plays. Confronted with growing resentment toward foreigners, Tab decides to return home to the banks of the Sázava River southeast of Prague. No sooner has he arrived than Tab finds himself falsely accused of a terrible crime and forced to go on the run with his two sons. Over the course of their peregrinations, dodging authorities by car, foot, and raft, they encounter a motley cast of allies and enemies. Tab's sudden reappearance and just-as-sudden disappearance ripple through the community, catalyzing a chaotic chain of events that reaches a final, raucous crescendo. Hailed as "a picaresque romp of black humor and fantasy" (Times Literary Supplement), this is an unforgettable novel about finding the sparks of humanity even in the bleakest of places, in which love or the longing to find it lie around every bend.
Trzynastoletni Ondra przyjeżdża z Pragi do dziadka mieszkającego w małej
wiosce nieopodal polskiej granicy. Odkrywa nagle, że ten zakątek zagubiony
pośr�d monumentalnych g�r skrywających tajemnicze jaskinie nie jest już tym
samym światem, kt�ry zapamiętał z dzieciństwa. Odległe wydarzenia i tutaj
przynoszą chaos i konsternację, unieważniają prawa rządzące dotychczas życiem
niewielkiej społeczności. Rzeczywistość, kt�ra nadchodzi, czyni wszystko
możliwym, oddaje się we władanie mitom i sennym majakom, ujawnia głęboko
skrywane namiętności, a przede wszystkim wprowadza bohatera w dorosłość
