Magdalena Wagnerová

Rat the Great

Krys Veliký Krys Veliký
Krys Veliký
Dybbuk, 2010, 136 pp
Children’s and Young Adult

Once upon a time, somewhere on a grainary near Mělník, a slightly peculiar contingent of suspicious-looking rats from Prague turns up. They are looking for a male rat who goes under the name Rat. Though everybody calls him Rat the Great – presumably after Alexander the Great since the rat is renowned for his courage and boldness. The arrival of the troupe was spurred on by impending cataclysm of the Prague rats. A few days before, a strange, fierce monster – the Krkodrav – appeared in a canalization duct below Ungelt ready to destroy everything that he came across. His powers seem immense and the threat to the Prague rats and, in fact, the whole of Old Town, tremendous.

The adventure-packed narrative not only takes us to the famous spots, such as the Church of Our Lady before Týn, Ungelt, Platýz or the Old Town Square, but also ventures into the more off-the-beaten areas such as Řásnovka or the maze of arcane underground corridors spreading underneath the plethora of old cloisters, the National Theatre or the Hunger Wall in Petřín. Each of the locations mentioned in the text can be visited to this day and one can thus witness these spots from both the fictional story and real history. The story about the heroic rat who embarks on a quest to help his Prague comrades combines elements of suspense, adventure and children’s affinity for animal world stories as well as the urge to discover the magic of old sights.

Illustrated by Teraza Tyditlátová.

Krys Veliký
Dybbuk, 2010, 136 pp