Literary fiction  |  English sample translation available

Aviaries is a posthumously published text from the recently deceased author of one of the first Czech novels to openly describe lesbian relations, Year of Pearls, which has been translated into many languages. Aviaries is an intimate diary account of a neurotically oversensitive perception of the world around us. As in her previous works, here too Brabcová works bewitchingly with the language, pulsating from bare recording to supreme metaphoricalness, from lyrical tropes to vulgarity, revealing motifs of being alone and lost in a world that has ceased to make sense. The everyday entries shift to more general and symbolic testimonies. They do not philosophize but cause shock by revealing the grotesque – as if the present generated nothing but black humour, the bizarre, the pompous and the void. The pilgrim has examined the world and now has nowhere to go. There is no longer any paradise of the heart, her own interior world… Brabcová is a Magnesia Litera prizewinner and the first ever Jiří Orten Award winner. Aviaries is a black pearl.

Praise

“This sophisticated testimony of social exclusion oscillates between the diary genre, dream entries and fantasy prose.”

— Petr Bílek, Literární noviny

“[Aviaries has] a rich style, figurative language, a combination of absolute introspection and reflections on external situations”

— Josef Chuchma, Lidové noviny