Michal Viewegh Book order

Over a generous time span, this book follows the varied lives of several high-school classmates, from their teenage growing pains to their early forties. Connoisseurs of the work of the current most popular Czech author will find intact his familiar style (the slightly melancholic grotesque), in a tale which describes, with irony and delicate nostalgia, friendship, teenage confusion, love and destiny, including dreams and hopes, first loves and marriage, disappointment and disillusion, failure and personal tragedy, not to mention the impact on life of alcohol, beauty and ugliness, and above all the sadness that slowly penetrates the lives of the characters as they age. Dodgeball is one of its author’s most successful novels, whether in terms of numbers of copies sold or the responses of critics, including some from abroad, or readers. Over 200,000 copies have been sold in the Czech Republic alone, and it has already become available in twelve other languages, including German, Spanish, Italian and Russian. It has won the Magnesia Litera Readers’ Prize and in 2015 it was turned into a successful feature film under the same title. Following Bringing up Girls in Bohemia and Bliss was it in Bohemia, this is the third of the author’s novels to appear in English translation.

A wildly comic story about the fate of a Czech family from the 1960s onwards. At turns humorous, ironic, and sentimental, an engaging portrait of their attempts to flee from history (meaning the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia) - or at least to ignore it as long as possible. The author depicts his parents' life stories and also his own adolescence with humorous hyperbole. The account focuses on the difficulties of the father, an idiosyncratic workaholic whose efforts to protect his family regularly involve losing his dignity. At the same time, the extraordinarily gifted Kvido, an aspiring writer, narrates his own teenage troubles, in a world that is not of his own choosing.

Něco na těch Vánocích být musí / What's So Special About Christmas, Anyway? V edici bilingua vycházejí tři autorovy povídky Smilstvo, Záhada a Něco na těch Vánocích být musí. První povídka je variací na Vieweghovo frekventované téma nevěra, ale tentokrát je nasvíceno zcela nečekanou pointou; v Záhadě se chystá mladík překvapit svou přítelkyni poněkud nadstandardním darem a v povídce Něco na těch Vánocích být musí stačí jeden zakouřený bar, jedno neplánované setkání a několik sklenek martini k tomu, aby byla konzumní všednost Vánoc nadobro zapomenuta. Poprvé se čtenář může setkat s texty Michala Viewegha v dvojjazyčné, anglicko-české verzi.

Beata is the drop out daughter of a sleazy Czech new Millionaire. She seeks life's meaning in post-communist Central Europe.