Jáchym Topol

City Sister Silver

Sestra Sestra
Sestra
Atlantis, 1996
Foreign rights:
Pluh
http://www.pluh.org
info@pluh.org
Awards:
 1995 Egon Hostovský Prize
Read an excerpt:
English
Literary fiction  |  English sample translation available

Always surprising and fast-paced, City Sister Silver is at once satirical and romantic, wild and controlled. The novel is full of storytelling, myths, dreams and nightmares, shifting through a variety of genres. It is a novel for readers who want an unforgettable reading experience.

What makes City Sister Silver so special is its language, its energy, and its ability to creatively capture the feelings that accompanied the opening up of Central and Eastern Europe in the 90s, when in Topol’s words “time exploded”. It is a truly breathtaking book. There is, however, a protagonist, Potok, and a love interest, whom he calls Sister. In short, this is not a realistic approach to an important historical watershed, but rather a unique, imaginative approach. As one Czech critic wrote, “City Sister Silver tells me more about the epoch than many of the books that try so hard to articulate and explain the burning ideas of the day.”

Praise

“Readers embarking on City Sister Silver are in for an exhilarating, exasperating journey […] kaleidoscopic and ethereal, full of motion for its own sake, with many memorable stops along the route.”

— Neil Bermel, New York Times Book Review

“Topol’s book is a fervent effort by a post-Cold War writer to break away from the familiar dissident mode of his seniors and to stake out the fresh troubles that freedom – and, more to the point, a raw market economy have spawned since the Velvet Revolution.”

— Patricia Hampl, Los Angeles Times Book Review

Sestra
Atlantis, 1996
Foreign rights:
Pluh
http://www.pluh.org
info@pluh.org
Awards:
 1995 Egon Hostovský Prize
Read an excerpt:
English