Michal Ajvaz

The Luxembourg Gardens

Trans. Olga Akbulatova
Люксембургский сад Люксембургский сад
Люксембургский сад
Globus, 2013, 144 pp
Language: Russian
Foreign rights:
Dana Blatná Literary Agency
http://www.dbagency.cz
blatna@dbagency.cz
Prose

Paul, a teacher, makes a typo in an Internet search engine and discovers notes written by a certain Professor Ross in the Ygguric language, and in this “grammar” experiences fortunes and misfortunes in various parts of the world – though of course it is possible that everything is merely a mystification.

This is a novel about the transformation of perception, love and jealousy, hatred and reconciliation; the new language created by Ross and its deciphering; programming audioanimatronic dummies similar to those used in Disneyland as well as dangerous psychopharmaceuticals. The Luxembourg Garden is also about a replica of a Parisian street in a jungle, a concert at an amphitheatre in Taormina in Sicily, a mercurial Hong Kong battery-powered toy found by the main character in a Pommeraye passage in Nantes or a live crayfish which a waiter dropped on the floor of a garden in a Nice restaurant.

Information about the original Czech edition

Lucemburská zahrada

Люксембургский сад
Globus, 2013, 144 pp
Language: Russian
Foreign rights:
Dana Blatná Literary Agency
http://www.dbagency.cz
blatna@dbagency.cz