This farce with an imp as narrator is an original take on the eternal story of man and woman.

Jiří Kratochvil is one of the leading postmodern Czech writers. In this story, set at the end of the Second World War, he plays with the narrator, the reader and the characters. He often shatters the illusory authenticity of the narration or, conversely, uses it as a source of tension. He plays around with form, intervenes in the action and uses alienating plot devices.

This simple story of a complicated and ultimately fruitless search begins with a malevolent narrator, the Imp, to whom the adolescent Jakoubek and the beautiful Daniela (referred to as “the whore”) fall victim. The Imp, who lives in the hollow of an oak tree after having evicted an owl, wilfully manipulates the fates of the characters and takes a capricious pleasure in his narrative. During the war, Daniela had been a prominent German mistress, and after the defeat of Germany she is only saved from being lynched by the timely intervention of the Imp. For Jakoubek, a mere week spent living with Daniela then transforms into a pubescent dream; Daniela keeps searching for her Jakoubek until she finally dies homeless on a bench by Špilberk Castle in Moravia.

Kratochvil returns to the trinity of beauty–lust–chastity and turns them upside down. In a closing note he explains how he deconstructed his earlier novel Siamský příběh (Siamese Story, 1996), the story of a twelve-year-old boy’s love for an older woman, and used it to construct Bakshish. The reader thus finds himself ‘led astray’ by the author once again. “My greatest desire is to set in motion some kind of capricious story and then tell it with gusto right to the end,” said the author, who has maintained the “lust zum fabulieren” in his latest work.

This novel effectively portrays individual fates set against the background of historical events, combining a love story with a bildungsroman, gunslinger tale and myth.

Ondřej Štindl’s narrative is formed of three parts. Each has a different protagonist, each is set in a different historical period and yet many elements connect them: Russian Liberation Army soldier Štěpán at the end of World War 2, truck driver Michal during the harsh normalisation period and hospital orderly Ivan at the end of the Communist regime are outsiders who cannot conform to society and don’t even particularly want to. Although they try to integrate into their communities and submit to unseen forces, there eventually comes a moment when they make a fateful decision and resist. Their lives are irreversibly transformed and start moving towards a tragic denouement, inevitable and devastating, however there is always a chance that there is hope beyond the line they have crossed.

At Cross-Eyed Jim’s gunslingers’ café they don’t just serve freshly ground coffee, cakes and eggnog, but also literary treats. Ever since the librarian Boženka Oprátková set up the prison library and made life more bearable for the most hardened death-row criminals, the hearts of the villains have been moved by group readings and interpretations of literary works, and even their tastes have begun to change. This harmony, however, is disrupted by Dante Skunk Shakespeare, the greatest literary gangster of all time, shamelessly purloining all kinds of texts, from classic novels to timetables. The fight with the bookworm bandit ends in victory for the intrepid Czech librarian. Although she fails to secure the support of the hard men of the Wild West for a revolt against the Habsburgs, the cultivated spirit of their literary meetings is reflected in the character of the town. Marek Toman masterfully weaves together parody and paraphrases, paying homage to both low and high literature, as both of them have the power to set a crooked world straight: in the end the town of Sheydrem turns into Rowney.

After writing the extremely successful novel, Němci (The Germans), Jakuba Katalpa returns with a feminist-inflected multi-layered novel set in the present.

In her 70s, Květa is plagued by a sense of loneliness and uselessness after her husband’s death. As a result, she makes a small den in her cellar and waits for a visitor, whom she might imprison and tell the story of her life to. A postman named Bohumil becomes the victim. Meanwhile in America, Akiko Ikedao is dying of cancer. Hoang Thi Anh leaves her homeland and sets out for the long trip from Vietnam to Prague. She intends to help her daughter care for her household and small shop opposite Květa’s house, but meanwhile is confronted with cultural, generational and familial alienation. The characters’ stories, which intersect in Prague, are rooted in missed encounters, misunderstandings, and fate’s shared loneliness. They are illustrated through the book’s short chapters and matter-of-fact style.

A gripping book about the Holocaust for children and young adults based on authentic documents.

Twelve-year-old Honza’s war story begins in 1940 and ends in the autumn of 1943 and describes a childhood and adolescence cut short by history as well as heroism, friendship and solidarity regardless of age or risk. The story is set in the ghetto of Terezín, where the main character ends up in solidarity with his Jewish schoolmates. The author links fiction with documents: for example, the diary of the prisoner Petr Ginz and the Terezín children’s magazine Vedem. “The only thing which distinguishes us from them is that we were born into happier times,” states the author, who has been studying the lives of children in the Terezín ghetto since 2009.

In this literary science fiction novel set in the near future, an ageing narrator, with painful memories of past catastrophes, struggles to adjust to life in a new idealistic world.

This cautionary utopian novel, with an almost fairy tale structure, takes place in the late 21st century after an atomic and social apocalypse. In this future, the aim of mankind is to colonise the planets in the solar system. Humanity has found itself living in perfect harmony, unsettled only by disturbing memories from the eldest survivors. The hero of the story is an old man who seeks to help the young, but is consumed by fateful memories that prevent him from believing in the modern dream of universal wealth, cooperation and compassion. The fairy tale is nothing but an illusion.

A captivating debut novel about studying abroad in St. Petersburg, Dostoevsky’s novels and the search for oneself.

In the novel Jolka, the protagonist of the same name goes on a study trip to St. Petersburg to penetrate the mystery of Dostoevsky’s novels, to get to know the distinctive Russian soul and, last but not least, to escape from her own past. A graduate in Russian studies, Jana Guljuškina wrote an imaginative story set mostly between 2007 and 2008 in which narrative perspectives alternate vividly. The novel focuses mainly on the young woman’s encounter with a different culture – at first Jolka experiences misunderstanding in St. Petersburg as she does not know the language and the Russian students have a problem pronouncing her name. Over time, however, she begins to bond with both the frosty environment of St. Petersburg and some young Russians. At the same time, it turns out that more than the desire to discover a foreign country, she was driven to Russia by her bleak past, in which there are several broken relationships. This dense, somewhat melancholic novel is a mature work by a writer from whom both Czech and foreign readers can expect a lot from in the future.

The debut work by a war correspondent and Czech Television reporter in the Middle East.

Jakub Szántó offers a detailed insider’s account of his experiences as a war correspondent in various corners of the Earth and different types of military conflicts and revolutions. He is professionally dedicated to his work, but he recalls his experiences in a personal rather than objective way. The dramas of front lines, child and juvenile soldiers, famine, destitution and the pain of war or revolution are presented vividly by an eyewitness who spent 20 years of his life experiencing them. The book is valuable not only as a personal testimony but also as a glimpse into the work of a war correspondent, a journalist in situations it is impossible to prepare for. As a history graduate Szántó is also able to set the events he has observed and experienced in the historical context. The tragedy of the events related is softened by humour and irony. The book includes an extensive section of the author’s photographs from the field.

A vivid narrative describing the simple cycle of life in a village, which is dictated by the rhythm of work in the fields, changes in the weather and the regular commitment of looking after animals and young and old family members.

The Village is set in the modern-day rural area of Vysočina and is populated by family groups whose lives and work the story revolves around. It is a first-person narrative related by different members of three generations of both sexes: grandmothers, grandfathers, mothers and sons. What they all have in common is the environment they were born into, where most of them have remained as they are unable to do otherwise. The ties that bind them to the village are not only familial and regional, but also linguistic. The Village is narrated in the Horácko dialect, or what remains of it. Dvořáková not only differentiates between the various generations by their changing relationship towards work, the land, domestic animals, the landscape, the fields and faith, or their attitude towards their parents and grandparents, but also by language – i.e. the extent to which their speech preserves elements of the dialect.

These people cannot see beyond the horizon of the neighbouring forest for their one pub and one shop. As the author says, they didn’t just put on tracksuit bottoms, they were born into them. Even though they all know each other’s business, they know little of each other’s feelings. The countryside has rules which cannot be ignored if you want to live there. You have to leave the city behind.

A story set in Taiwan about the search for truth and one’s place in history.

A Taiwanese man called Bao strives to keep a firm hold over every aspect of his life. He has a wonderful career, children at prestigious schools, and he doesn’t even seem to be troubled by his dysfunctional relationship with his ex-wife, Sedrika. In Taiwan the main thing is not to lose face – no matter what. However, all that suddenly changes when Sedrika falls ill with an incurable disease and their son, David, decides to meet his uncle Tae, who Bao has apparently fallen out with over an inheritance. From that moment on, the layers of unspoken family grievances and lies gradually begin to peel away, fundamentally altering the lives of all those around Bao. Nothing is as it seems and nothing turns out the way the protagonists in the novel would have wanted. In the character of Bao and the story of his family, we see a reflection of the fate of a sorely tried country and ancestral traumas reaching far back into the past. The novel Black Tongues shows the fragility of our ideas about values such as truth, duty, honour and love, as well as how difficult it is to express ourselves outwardly in a genuine and honest manner.

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