A novel about people with extraordinary, supernatural powers in a country without faith.

Literary fiction

Markéta Pilátová has chosen to set her novel, Diviner, in the misty landscape of the Jeseníky Mountains in North Bohemia, infamous as the site of gruesome medieval witch trials. However, she combines this setting with parallel worlds bordering on the fairy tale. In spite of that, the story takes place in the present and focuses on two very different men with “supernatural” powers, abilities verging on sorcery. Both the diviners and the powerful manipulators of the communist regime use their abilities in their own ways, inadvertently drawing attention to the atheist Czechs who desperately wish for something to believe in: something mysterious, miraculous or spiritual.