A literary journey across the railways of Europe

Literary fiction

The author, who has been fascinated by the world of railways since he was a child, intersperses his absorbing historical account with fascinating tales from his many travels – from Palermo in Sicily to Lapland in Finland, on the overnight train from Kyiv to Lviv or on the local train from Česky Ráj to Jedlová. He travels through Germany, Switzerland and Austria, crossing the Alps to Trieste and Venice in Italy. Never again will you mind missing a train, as another one will always come along. You’ll swap the fastest routes for slower, more scenic ones, learn to appreciate the beauty of railway cathedrals, understand the “song” of the locomotives and discover why a railway goddess watches over our destinies. This personal and poetic guide for all train lovers was first published in German by Piper Verlag.

Jaroslav Rudiš (1972) is a writer of novels and screenplays as well as theatre and radio plays. His debut novel Nebe pod Berlínem (The Sky Under Berlin) was published in 2002. He has written four novels and two novellas in Czech, which have been published in many languages and have even been made into films. For the novel Winterbergova poslední cesta (Winterberg’s Last Journey, 2019), which he first wrote and published in German, he was nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize and awarded the Chamisso-Preis/Hellerau in 2020. In 2022 he also received the Karel Čapek Prize for this work. He collaborated with the artist Jaromír 99 on the cult graphic novel Alois Nebel. He is a member of the group Kafka Band. He lives in Czechia and Germany and writes in both Czech and German.