Prose

“Perhaps I should introduce myself straight away,” so one of the narrators, young Jonah, begins Jiří Kratochvíl’s latest romanetto full of complex plots with an unexpected dénouement. He was found as a baby during a rainstorm in an empty tram, like the belly of a whale in a storm-tossed sea. Years later the mysterious homeless Charlie comes into his life, a man of many trades, who has lost his memory, but who sees to Jonah’s upbringing and education with increasing alacrity, as if preparing him for something extraordinary. The circumstances are unclear but the two did not meet in Černá pole by chance.