Just as Kundera’s first novel continues to challenge readers with the question of what the central joke in The Joke actually is, Beneš’s novel presents a similar challenge by asking which era is coming to an end.

Literary fiction

After his successful debut with A Slight Loss of Loneliness, Eli Beneš based his second novel on more conventional ingredients: the midlife crisis of a man and his journey from a dysfunctional family into the arms of a younger lover; working in the corporate world; artificial intelligence threatening to replace creative human labour; and a novel about writing a novel. From these conventional yet rewarding elements, Beneš has crafted a novel with references to other works and the plausibility of its narrative, while simultaneously confronting its playful storytelling with the weighty theme of a life unravelling—placing burdens on the protagonist’s shoulders which are almost too much to bear. Against these compelling backdrops, a subtle exploration unfolds of a person whose soul is wounded by the dystopian pressures of change, which emerges as the novel’s central and original theme. The atmosphere is heightened by a gentle satire and a sense of strangeness, preventing the novel from being read as a straightforward commentary on our present day and instead guiding the reader towards the search for meanings of broader, symbolic significance.

Eli Beneš (1976) was born in Prague and studied English and American Studies and Czech Language and Literature at Charles University, where he also later studied Journalism and Media Studies with a specialization in television and radio. He graduated from the Paidea Project-Incubator at the European Institute for Jewish Studies in Stockholm and the Ami-Ad programme in Tel Aviv. For fourteen years he was a presenter at Prague’s Radio 1, where he focused mainly on Czech electronic projects and bands; he was also the owner of a music publishing company and a long-time composer of music for Czech Television and other media. He also occasionally teaches electronic music at the Prague Electronic Music Academy. He has worked in the media, first as an editor-in-chief of several magazines, and later as a publisher. He is currently working for the media house Seznam.cz. His debut novel A Slight Loss of Loneliness won the prestigious Czech Magnesia Litera Award (Debut of the Year) in 2024.