A novel about the life in exile of entrepreneur Jan Antonín Baťa, who played a major role in turning the Baťa shoe company into a global business phenomenon.

Literary fiction  |  English sample translation available

While in his homeland the Communists were establishing a dictatorship, Jan Antonín Baťa was constructing new ‘ideal cities’ in the Brazilian jungle based on the Czech city of Zlín. In this novel, Jan Antonín attempts to posthumously tell his story as he experienced it, not as it was portrayed by communist propaganda. He recalls his closest coworkers and advisors, victories and defeats and he refuses to leave this world until he has found justice. However, he doesn’t speak alone. The women who lived with him in exile also tell their stories — his daughters Ludmila and Edita and granddaughter Dolores — as well as his son-in-law Ljubodrag and other companions.

Using family memories, diaries and documents as well as Baťa’s prose and poetry, masterful storyteller Markéta Pilátová has written a page-turner about the 20th century, in which so many unambiguous acts can be interpreted in so many contradictory ways.

Markéta Pilátová (1973) is a novelist, Hispanics scholar and journalist. She graduated in Romance Studies and history from Palacký University in Olomouc. After graduating she worked there as a lecturer for six years. From 2007 to 2008 she was the foreign affairs editor of the weekly magazine Respekt. She subsequently travelled to Argentina and Brazil: for five years she taught the children of Czechs who had emigrated from Czechoslovakia to Brazil and Argentina. She has published essays, articles on international politics, reports, reviews, short stories and columns for several different Czech publications (e.g. Respekt, Lidové noviny, Právo). In addition to novels she has also written award-winning books for children and young adults. Her books have been translated into German, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish. She lives in Prague and Velké Losiny.