A monumental novel by one of the most beloved Czech writers.

Bílá Voda, limpid white water. This is the poetic name of a forsaken village hidden in the shadow of bordering mountains, to which droves of pilgrims once would journey to entreat the miraculous statue of the Virgin Mary for help. It is in this very place, several centuries later, that Lena Lagnerová arrives, seeking a refuge from her own past, which has brought her to the brink of suicide. Instead of a monastery with a large religious community, however, all she finds are a few nuns, led by the idiosyncratic Sister Evarista. Evarista came to Bílá Voda on the last night of September in 1950, when the communist regime carted off all holy sisters to detention convents. Lena soon realizes that the demons haunting the past of the Bílá Voda nuns have not disappeared, and what’s more, play a role in her own destiny.

Evarista’s story, along with the fates of the other nuns, are based on real events, which Kateřina Tučková spent many years researching in archives and from among witnesses. In addition to the riveting narrative, Tučková’s novel critically considers the status of women in the Catholic Church, and at the same time, on a symbolic level, the unequal status of women in society as a whole.

In six allegorical short stories, the author employs various folklore literary genres – from legend and fable to arabesque – to depict the problems of today.

Once upon a time… The Virgin Mary died in Warsaw. Poachers slit the bellies of grouse. Masquerade boots were made from lion paws. Persian gates were closed to caravans. The Full Moon lent to hares so that they could buy furs. The magician Rye crowed over Prague. The Death of Old Masha presents the reader with romantic illusion. Thomas the Apostle warns at the outset: “Truth is a story hidden behind legend.” “The book is ultimately an experiment and a play with genre. It is an attempt to talk about the present as though it happened long ago and has left behind only a remnant of myth. Or perhaps it’s the other way around: an attempt to find a remnant of myth in the present,” says Vratislav Maňák.

A book about non-places – spaces beyond the boundaries of our everyday life that we would prefer to ignore.

The book of essays The Non-Places of Towns by the poet and architect Anna Beata Háblová takes a multi-perspective view of the marginal spaces in towns: neglected, transitory and overlooked places, i.e. “non-places.” Non-places come into existence for various reasons: because of an ill-conceived development, an impractical location or interventions in the landscape. Although they are irritating and repellent, they can also be a place to escape the predictability of the public space. The author works with sources from the field of architecture and urban planning or urban studies, but also philosophy, sociology, economics and geography. Each essay is preceded by a thematically linked short story. The Non-Places of Towns is a contribution to the search for a home and one’s own place in the world: such a topical issue in this day and age.

This wide-ranging novel by the leading Czech writer is a symphony of narrative playfulness as well as a homage to traditional storytelling.

Cities is made up of several novels in one book, linked by a narrator who sets out on a classic trip around the world in search of knowledge. While looking for a mysterious machine component containing a flash drive whose contents are unknown, he visits nine countries and cities: from Sweden via Ireland, France, the USA and Japan to Poland. During his adventures he participates in, or learns of, a number of immersive stories, constructed as separate novels: romance, fantasy, thriller and action. The book is a synthesis of all of Ajvaz’s prose work, philosophy, unique sense of humour, favourite narrative approaches and sources of literary inspiration, as well as a homage to narrative traditions. It is also the third and final work in an original trilogy of novels using postmodern techniques.

A collection of loosely interconnected stories about women written in a pure style.

A set of twelve short stories loosely following on from one another about a number of heroines who share the same lack of grounding: Tereza staves off boredom with lovers, Karla with fun, Klára with wealth, Eva by sacrificing herself for her family, Alice by being brave… Events are supported by memories of a formative youth that leads to infidelity, promiscuity and abuse. These women’s stories collide with each other without any of them realizing it. Like the author’s debut work Koho vypijou lišky (Whom Foxes Drink Up, 2013), Places in the Dark is truly dark reading thanks in part to the language used, which is raw and direct.

A collection of refreshing, playful and gently ironic lyric poems which combine a wry smile at the absurdity of life with melancholic meditations on human fate, desires and the evanescence of dreams.

The collection Old Pop creatively develops the legacy of postmodern poetry, though without the need for radical gestures aimed at dismantling the canonical texts and the so-called great narratives. It “merely” reveals the mechanisms of a “great narrative” of literature, which has not always been great in the sense of admirable. That is why the poet makes it clear that he doesn’t take poetry deadly seriously, but rather views it much more as a game – an enjoyable play on words, ideas, images, fragments of literary traditions and allusions to historical styles.

In this collection, poetry appears to be a message from the old world, though it does not invite us to escape from the modern world, but rather seeks to enrich and enliven the world we inhabit through a liberating use of the imagination and musing over the patina of archaic words. The distinctive atmosphere of the collection is also due to the poet’s ability to sketch out a fragment of a story within a concise piece of text which has the potential to be expanded into a short story or even a novel. The fates of the bizarre characters created by Ohnisko in this way are, however, only roughly outlined, leaving the reader to flesh them out using their own imagination.

A graphic novel showing there will always be a good reason to get out of the house.

Total Madness is aimed mainly, though not exclusively, at teenage readers and depicts the everyday horror of someone suffering from panic attacks. The main character is Anna, a 17-year-old high-school student regarded by those around her as “Mrs Faulty” or a “weirdo”. Eschewing dramatic plotlines, the narrative describes Anna’s return to school after a month of being unable to get out of bed and her subsequent trip with the mysterious Max. However, instead of a carefree road movie, we follow Anna’s struggle with the daily fears and anxieties that lurk in a crowded bus, in a motorway tunnel, in public showers, in random passers-by and in hypothetical ideas taken to paranoid conclusions. Tomáš Kopecký’s illustrations convey the physical manifestations of mental fears – the moments when Anna literally sees red. Or when, from apparent calm, she suddenly descends into neurotic ramblings, losing herself in terrifying fantasies and desperately trying to regain her equilibrium and focus.

You can read an excerpt here.

About the authors:

Tereza Kopecká (1984) published her first book for children in 2019. She has a passion for storytelling and it was her long-term ambition to write a comics story inspired by real life.

Tomáš Kopecký (1982) began drawing as a child, he drew at school and he is still drawing today. He has illustrated a few games and books and is absolutely thrilled to have finally been able to illustrate a comic book.

What do animals experience in a world which was not created for them? Can they inhabit our language in the same way they inhabit cities? Their situation is more similar to those of humans than we usually care to admit.

The stories of a jackdaw from the Prague underground, bats in Barcelona, or flowers evacuated ahead of the war in Ukraine. The life of a pheasant, usually hidden from human view, with its creative and political acts. The testimonies of kestrels, rats, magpies, ragwort and other inhabitants of the world, united by the experience of passing through an alien environment. This, roughly speaking, is how we might understand the work of Marie Iljašenko, who invites animals into her poems and lets them speak through their own habits. She shares her words with them, even though, in a certain sense, it is still her own voice. And cities are similar in this respect. In notes from Barcelona, Cork, Kyiv, Prague and Tokyo, the author thematizes the experience of migration and reflects on the relationship between language, identity, the body and place. In so doing, she shows that the experience and sensitivity of people and animals can meet in the space of language—just as they do in the space of cities—amid constant concealment and doubt, yet with the ever-present possibility of compassion.

In his new novel, one of the most entertaining and eccentric Czech writers has reached the pinnacle of divine madness and narrative opulence.

Petr Stančík has made a name for himself in Czech literature through his narratively ingenious, delightful and carefully constructed books. The author employs the techniques of the detective or mystery novel, which he then deconstructs or subverts. Stančík’s latest novel also starts off with a search. The main character, Planet, has been sent to find treasure in a dystopian Prague, which is ruled over by Artificial Thought and the “dustmen”. However, this serves more as a backdrop for various narrative ideas, word games, and descriptions of bizarre culinary experiences. Although the novel touches on current themes, such as the reception of queer people, it is principally a celebration of storytelling and literary games.

Marie Šťastná’s lean poetry addresses universal questions concerning relationships, family expectations and inner freedom.

The collection Happiness Is Sure to Come is made up of sections that bring together poems on a particular theme – “Rules”, “Time”, “Breathing”, “Moving” and “Bridges” – and one could say they are everyday poems written from the perspective of a woman, mother, girlfriend, daughter and granddaughter. A concealed freedom is happily poured into the poems about the smiling promise of happiness in life, which plays very well with the author’s surname on the cover (“Šťastná” means “happy” in Czech). A detachment from non-happiness and sorrow – strangers’ and one’s own – the ability to take a sober and, in places, amused look at them, mixes with the ability to revive and rejoice in the old predatory ferocity and indomitability incarnate. Happiness Is Sure to Come has a disturbing chill to it, beneath which boils something very erotic and elementally unrestrained, which will obstinately rebel against the everyday and the expected.