Prose  |  English sample translation available

An imaginary travelogue or a combination of cultural and ethnological fiction. This time the story is not set in the shadowy corners of magical Prague; here the author invites us on a journey to an island where a sense of solidarity has evolved which is alien to the life of our European or European-American rational and pragmatic civilisation. It is a totally open solidarity, based on principles of chaos and destruction of all signs of totalitarianism in our language and thought.

Praise

“A lovely catalog of – and meditation on – other-worldly ideas and notions as well as a multi-layered work of fiction(s), The Golden Age is a wonderfully entertaining novel, with the sparkle of its bits coalescing surprisingly into an intriguing conceptual work.”

—M.A.Orthofer, The Complete Review

“This 2001 novel, Ajvaz’s most brilliantly complicated, is a fictional travelogue, part philosophical ethnography and part potboiling fairy tale.”

—Jonathan Bolton, CONTEXT