Literary fiction

With his new novel Fish Blood (Rybí krev) Jiří Hájíček continues his line of rural prose, introducing readers to the countryside of Southern Bohemia. In 2008 Hana returns home to the village she grew up in after 15 years abroad. But the place she had imagined settling in, marrying and working as a schoolteacher has become a virtual ghost town. Seeing her father, brother and childhood friends Hana takes a searching look back and tries to heal old wounds.

After his successful 2006 Magnesia litera award winning novel Rustic Baroque (Selský baroko) set in the 1950s, Hájíček again uses the setting of a Czech village to explore very different social changes and its effect on people and communities.