This novel effectively portrays individual fates set against the background of historical events, combining a love story with a bildungsroman, gunslinger tale and myth.

Historical fiction, Literary fiction, Science fiction

Ondřej Štindl’s narrative is formed of three parts. Each has a different protagonist, each is set in a different historical period and yet many elements connect them: Russian Liberation Army soldier Štěpán at the end of World War 2, truck driver Michal during the harsh normalisation period and hospital orderly Ivan at the end of the Communist regime are outsiders who cannot conform to society and don’t even particularly want to. Although they try to integrate into their communities and submit to unseen forces, there eventually comes a moment when they make a fateful decision and resist. Their lives are irreversibly transformed and start moving towards a tragic denouement, inevitable and devastating, however there is always a chance that there is hope beyond the line they have crossed.

Ondřej Štindl (1966) is a film and music critic, author, screenwriter and DJ. After the Velvet Revolution he cofounded the first private Czech radio station, Radio 1, where he broadcasts to this day. He has also worked as a journalist for the Lidové noviny newspaper, the Czech section of the BBC and the Revolver Revue literary magazine. Štindl’s screenplays have become successful feature films and his first novel, Mondschein, was published in 2012.