In her latest novel, one of the most successful young Czech authors asks how can we know what is best for others when we ourselves do not know how to be happy?

Literary fiction

Ten-year-old Viktor is a spoiled troublemaker who lives with his mother, thirty-year-old theatre actress Hana. One day, Hana receives an offer to act in a TV series filmed on the other side of the country. She sees this as an opportunity to send her son to stay with her mother, who lives in the countryside and has her own strict ideas about how to educate the boy. For each of the characters, Viktor’s move is intended to ‘solve’ the root of their current troubles: what can you do with the remainder of your life when you are ten, thirty or sixty? WHAT really is best for everybody? In telling the story, the three characters alternate as first-person narrators, gradually introducing the reader to each of their perspectives, opinions, personalities and relationships. Who is really trying to help and who has betrayed the others? Petra Soukupová is a master of portraying family relationships and the loneliness inside of them. She has an exceptional understanding of, both, child characters, as well as those who are nearing the end of their lives.

Best for Everybody shares certain plot points with Soukupová’s latest book for children, Kdo zabil Snížka (Who Killed Snowy?). The two books complement each other, creating a unique reading experience for parents and children.

Petra Soukupová (1982) is a novelist, script editor and screenwriter. She studied scriptwriting and dramaturgy at Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. She is one of the most successful contemporary Czech novelists. To date she has published several novels for adults and books for children. She is the recipient of numerous awards and nominations; her books regularly make it onto bestseller lists and have been translated into ten languages. Since 2009 she has been a regular contributor to themed short-story anthologies from the publisher Listen. Some of her books have also been made into films. For her prose debut K moři (To the Seaside, 2007) she received the Jiří Orten Award and was nominated for the Josef Škvorecký Award and the Magnesia Litera Award. Her second book, the triptych of short stories Zmizet (To Disappear, 2011), won the main prize – Book of the Year – as part of the Magnesia Litera Awards in 2010. She lives and works in Prague.