After writing the extremely successful novel, Němci (The Germans), Jakuba Katalpa returns with a feminist-inflected multi-layered novel set in the present.

Literary fiction

In her 70s, Květa is plagued by a sense of loneliness and uselessness after her husband’s death. As a result, she makes a small den in her cellar and waits for a visitor, whom she might imprison and tell the story of her life to. A postman named Bohumil becomes the victim. Meanwhile in America, Akiko Ikedao is dying of cancer. Hoang Thi Anh leaves her homeland and sets out for the long trip from Vietnam to Prague. She intends to help her daughter care for her household and small shop opposite Květa’s house, but meanwhile is confronted with cultural, generational and familial alienation. The characters’ stories, which intersect in Prague, are rooted in missed encounters, misunderstandings, and fate’s shared loneliness. They are illustrated through the book’s short chapters and matter-of-fact style.

Jakuba Katalpa (1979) is a writer who made her debut in 2006 with the novella Je hlína k snědku? (Is Soil for Eating?), for which she was nominated for the Magnesia Litera Award for discovery of the year. In 2009 her novel Hořké moře (The Bitter Sea) was nominated for the Jiří Orten Award. In 2013 the prose work Němci (Germans) was awarded the Josef Škvorecký Prize, the Czech Book Award and was nominated for the Magnesia Litera Award for prose. The novel has been published in translation in five countries, including Germany, and an Italian edition is forthcoming. In 2017 she published Doupě (The Den), her meticulous, multi-level novel set in the present day. Her most recent novel is Zuzanin dech (Zuzana’s Breath, 2020).