An unsettling vision of a world after an unspecified catastrophe, offering an original and suspenseful story about the search for human identity and the functioning of human society.

Science fiction

The narrative follows a community of survivors, against a Northern- and Eastern-European backdrop whose indistinct bleakness reflects the gloomy situation of the protagonists: having survived a perfect brainwashing, they now live in a totalitarian state whose reward for utter subjugation is respite in a virtual world called Dorma. Štindl’s dystopia refers in many ways to foreign classics (Huxley, Orwell, and Dick) as well as the Czech literary tradition (Egon Bondy) and Josef Bolf’s (who also co-authored the story) illustrations function as an original, parallel level of the book.

Praise:

“Štindl entered onto the Czech literary scene as a talented craftsman, endowed with considerable creativity, as a measured yet astute storyteller.”

—Petr Nagy, iLiteratura

“Mondschein is a novel which, like its protagonists, is intently searching. Searching for the boundaries between genres, searching for a way to cross them and searching for the appropriate language. It must be said, that unlike for the protagonists, this process has a positive outcome.”

—Anna Vondřichová, Aktualne.cz

About the author:

Ondřej Štindl (b. 1966) is a film and music critic, author, screenwriter and DJ. After the Velvet Revolution he cofounded the first private Czech radio station, Radio 1, where he broadcasts to this day. He has also worked as a journalist for the Lidové noviny newspaper, the Czech section of the BBC and the Revolver Revue literary magazine. Štindl’s screenplays have become successful feature films and his first novel, Mondschein, was published in 2012.