With an air of experimental casualness, the protagonist works through her traumas: she doesn’t have kids, or even a long-term partner to be the father of her children. A novel that breaks down the taboo of “non-motherhood” in a not entirely predictable way.

Literary fiction, Prose  |  English sample translation available

Amálie is a Prague intellectual who is full of energy; she loves the mountains, she’s learning Japanese…and yet her life seems to have fossilized into a strange immobility. At an age when her peers are starting a family at the last minute, she is still drifting from one failed relationship to the next and – with the help of psychotherapy, getaways and psychotropic substances – trying to resolve the longstanding issues she has with her all-too-present mother and dead father. However, as she observes the world and herself through the porthole of “inert” moments, it is not without a keen sense of irony and self-reflection, which imbues this story about the end of youth, set in Prague and Japan, with an almost unbearable lightness.