A novelistic image of an ordinary middle-aged woman who has to start over.

Literary fiction  |  English sample translation available

Jiří Hájíček’s ninth novel describes over twelve chapters the story of a university professor approaching fifty whose husband leaves her for a younger woman. Her only child has now grown up, she is estranged from her sister, her parents have to be looked after and she is beginning a new life in South Bohemia – an environment which is emblematic for Hájíček. He once again demonstrates his strengths as a character writer and expert on female qualities. The reader sympathises with the main character, Marie, due to her realism and sense of irony. The aim of the novel is not only to describe the romances of an abandoned middle-aged woman, but to show readers that even a wearisome, lonely, difficult, though mainly ordinary life is worthy of a novelist’s attention.

One of the most distinctive modern Czech writers, Jiří Hájíček (1967) has written several books suffused with the South Bohemian countryside. His novels have won the Magnesia Litera Award twice and been adapted into a feature film. Hájíček’s work has been translated into a number of languages, including English and Italian, and a short story was selected for the 2017 Best European Fiction anthology published by Dalkey Archive Press (USA).