A monumental novel by one of the most beloved Czech writers

Literary fiction

Bílá Voda, limpid white water. This is the poetic name of a forsaken village hidden in the shadow of bordering mountains, to which droves of pilgrims once would journey to entreat the miraculous statue of the Virgin Mary for help. It is in this very place, several centuries later, that Lena Lagnerová arrives, seeking a refuge from her own past, which has brought her to the brink of suicide. Instead of a monastery with a large religious community, however, all she finds are a few nuns, led by the idiosyncratic Sister Evarista. Evarista came to Bílá Voda on the last night of September in 1950, when the communist regime carted off all holy sisters to detention convents. Lena soon realizes that the demons haunting the past of the Bílá Voda nuns have not disappeared, and what’s more, play a role in her own destiny.

Evarista’s story, along with the fates of the other nuns, are based on real events, which Kateřina Tučková spent many years researching in archives and from among witnesses. In addition to the riveting narrative, Tučková’s novel critically considers the status of women in the Catholic Church, and at the same time, on a symbolic level, the unequal status of women in society as a whole.

Kateřina Tučková (1980) is a writer, playwright, publicist, art historian and curator of exhibitions. More than 300,000 copies of her books have been sold in the Czech Republic alone. She has won several literary awards, including the 2022 Czech State Award for Literature. In 2017, she was awarded the Freedom, Democracy and Human Rights Award by the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. She has also received the Premio Libro d’Europa at the Book Fair in Salerno, Italy. Her books have been published in twenty languages.