From the English edition:
In Search of the Essence of Place is a memoir of Petr Král’s experiences growing up in post-war Czechoslovakia and his later years in Paris. In a unique and elliptical self-portrait, from childhood dens beneath a piano and forts built beneath tables, the book spreads out past the family home, to the fields beyond and the businesses past that, and then to a barracks town perforated with secret spaces, discovering a whole country that exists only as a façade. Compelling and poetic, it explores place with intense care, and finds it fluid and richly associative. In a text that becomes its own rolling landscape, Král’s extraordinary language is born from and rewards deep, unusual attention and feeling.
Information in French here.