Prose
Kateřina Tučková is an art historian, translator and writer who has been very well received by Czech readers over the past decade. Her best known novel, The Žítková Goddesses, sold over 110,000 copies, won four Czech awards including the Magnesia Litera Readers’ award and has been translated into many languages including German and Polish.
The novel is a fascinating tale of the female soul, magic and a part of Czech history kept hidden. A group of mysterious woman, known as goddesses, have lived high up in the White Carpathian Mountains. They are far away from everything, which is why it is said that certain women among them have succeeded in preserving knowledge and intuition the rest of us have lost. They have passed this knowledge down from generation to generation for centuries. Dora Idesová is the last of the goddesses. She is reluctant to accept an outdated way of life and to read the futures of those who come to her in drips of wax, as her Aunt Surmena did. But everything changes once she understands that her personal circumstances that she has always considered unhappy – being sent to a boarding school and hospitalization in an asylum – is part of a carefully thought-out plan. It is the late 1990s, and in the archives of the Ministry of the Interior there is a file awaiting discovery – a file compiled by the State Security police on an enemy of the state, her Aunt Surmena. A disbelieving Dora begins to untangle details of the previously unknown fates of her family and other goddesses…
Information about the original Czech edition
Other selected published translations (6)
Boginie z Žítkovej Polish
Das Vermächtnis der Göttinnen German
Üldözött istennők Hungarian
Богините от Житкова Bulgarian
L'eredità delle dee. Una misteriosa storia dai Carpazi Bianchi Italian
The Last Goddess English