A novella with the intense atmosphere of 1980s Communist Czechoslovakia in a district of Prague.
Literary fiction | English sample translation available
The author carries on the tradition of Czech prose from the working-class district of Žižkov in Prague. She brings 1980s Žižkov to life with a wealth of characters who have their own micro-stories: secret policemen, prostitutes, currency speculators, as well as children and abused animals – at one point they were all part of this district for the poor and marginalized, who spoke the language of the tenements. The main characters are schoolchildren from one class, on the threshold of adulthood, but at the same time on the margins of society. The novella portrays the difficult period towards the end of the communist regime through their eyes and voices.
Simona Bohatá (1965) is a novelist and writer of song lyrics. She studied at a secondary school specializing in economics and then graduated from the Ježek Conservatory in lyrics and screenwriting. She grew up in the Prague district of Žižkov in the 1980s, which is the setting for her novel Všichni sou trapný (Everybody sucks, 2019). She described her childhood and adolescence in her debut work Máňa a my druzí (Máňa and the Rest of Us, 2017). She lives in a small village near Jindřichův Hradec.