Zuzana Brabcová

Year of Pearls

Rok perel Rok perel
Rok perel
Druhé město, 2012, 256 pp
9788072273232
Foreign rights:
Pluh
http://www.pluh.org
info@pluh.org
Goodreads rating
73.8% (Rated by 121 users)
Prose

When in 2000 Rok perel (The Year of Pearls) was first published, it immediately became a sensation. A novelistic lesbian coming-out attracted the interest of media and readers who would otherwise remain completely ignorant of the author. A lesbian relationship endows the novel with an ingredient of arousal hitherto unknown in the Czech literary canon, at least not this explicitly. When Lucie meets the provocative Magda, her life collapses to an extent she hasn’t even begun to imagine, and which parallels those in the famous cases of Mann’s Professor Unrat or Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert. Her coming out brings her no relief — euphoric moments are quickly followed by hangover, the change in sexual orientation becoming not only a given, but also a burden in the relationships with many other people with whom Lucie’s life has been connected. Brabcová constructs her story almost like a thriller with a secret: gradually taking shape and gaining tempo, escalating into a dramatic finale…

Praise

“The Year of the Pearls marks a very promising entry of Czech prose into the 21st century.”

— Pavel Mandys

Rok perel
Druhé město, 2012, 256 pp
9788072273232
Foreign rights:
Pluh
http://www.pluh.org
info@pluh.org
Goodreads rating
73.8% (Rated by 121 users)