Literary fiction
A young Czech teacher comes to teach local children to read and write. They teach him how to light a corn stove. Stray dogs, trampled, mulberries, goldenrod in bloom, the distant roar of the Danube. And gradually the memories come, as though things were happening all over again: years spent in a grammar school’s gym, treading the boards, studying in Germany, the solitude of different shores and journeys. People’s faces, fleeting moments of closeness.
Matěj Hořava has come up with a meditative work that is deeply autobiographical and stylistically distinctive. Its short, dense, linguistically colourful chapters are built around important events and seemingly fleeting feelings that for some reason are remembered for a lifetime: light at a certain angle of refraction, the sight of woman who will or will not be his, a howling wolf on a hillside. A special time of youth and a peculiar existence unfold before the reader’s eyes.
Information about the original Czech edition
Other selected published translations (4)
Ракия Bulgarian
Palinka. Prozy z Banatu Polish
Pálinka Hungarian
Rakija: Proze iz Banata Croatian