Literary fiction, Prose

This extensive novel by the well-known author and Czech studies specialist, Daniela Hodrová, is closely related to the life of translator and poet Bohumila Grögerová (1921-2014) and artist Adriena Šimotová (1926-2014). However, it is not only a novelisation of their stories but also a profound testimony about the metaphysical anxieties of modern life and perhaps also a remedy, given the author’s broad ‘comparative’ knowledge, which exceeds her previous novels and forms an anchoring counterpoint against the ‘intoxicating’ style and ‘spiralling’ structure of the novel.

Praise

“Spiral Sentences is another linguistically brilliant attempt at using literature to save a person and their life from fading into oblivion, and therefore also from death.”

— iLiteratura best books of 2015

“As with the author’s previous books, this work also demonstrates great cultural erudition and an original artistic approach to the form of the novel. In keeping with the book’s title, her sentences develop richly and intertwine into a cyclical and layered story in which the present is permeated by memories, contemporary characters repeatedly encounter the dead, the world of myths is projected onto real events and places, everyday situations alternate with allegorical and dreamlike scenes, and seemingly ordinary things are imbued with symbolic meanings.”

— Magnesia Litera jury