Historical fiction, Literary fiction, Prose

The first part of a planned trilogy whose theme is the twentieth century. A novel based on the traditional contrast between large and small history. The narration of the wife of a spa restaurateur and later a mayor meanders among the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the turbulent formation of independent Czechoslovakia. The war, a collapse of a marriage, animosities erupting from the depths of an ethnically and ideologically divided village, illusion and disillusion. Roman Ráž (1935) wrote the book in a documentary style which he reinforces with snippets from fictional diaries of family members and other involved characters. Fully developed and powerful, yet sharp and sensitive in its psychological portraiture; the Great War is actually not so much the point but rather the petty interpersonal conflicts and the everydayness, commonness which suddenly finds itself under existential pressure which it is forced to face.