The climax of an eight-part series of hardboiled crime novels by a former detective who writes under a pseudonym to protect his identity.

Detective Miko Syrový leaves the bustle of the city to relax in his home village, where he plans to spend a few quiet days with his young daughter. However, as soon as he arrives he is faced with a suspicious death which the local police have been too quick to dismiss as a mere accident. Miko starts to ask awkward questions, cracks begin to show in the rural idyll and evidence comes to light which casts more doubts and question marks upon the case. When the façade finally comes tumbling down, Miko realizes too late that this time his own life is on the line.

With an atmosphere reminiscent of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, this novel explores the ancient theme of crime and punishment within the family.

This debut novel, by Lucie Faulerová, is a harsh and jarring story about a young woman’s attitude to motherhood, family and children, as well as her role in society. The themes of family violence and domestic tyranny also surface in the book, and a child becomes a means of manipulating others. In Dust Catchers, relationships are impaired and complicated in, both, the protagonist’s extended and new family. Gradually, she abandons intimacy, work, and her standard role as a woman. She seeks to reveal the hidden truth about her mother, family and herself. Masochistic torment, however, is not enough to overcome the darkness of the past. Will violence suffice?

Faulerová brilliantly express the ambiguity of the line between guilt and enacting justice. The main character addresses the narrator, taking the floor and unsettling his role. The tension from this stylistic approach, the impressive pace and thrilling plot make Dust Catchers an exceptional read.

The story of the Mašín brothers and their band waging guerilla war against the Communist regime in the early 1950s could be the most dramatic Czech tale of the 20^th century. After their activities in Czechoslovakia, these five young men headed west – facing off against twenty thousand East German Volkspolizei and shooting their way to freedom.

In the novel So Far, So Good, Jan Novák wrote the story like a thrilling Czech Western and won the Magnesia Litera prize for Best Book of the Year. Now he and the artist Jaromír 99 have created a dramatic and visually arresting graphic novel in Jaromír 99’s unique and specific style of noir. After the runaway success in Czechia of their previous collaboration, Zátopek, the authors return with an even more explosive comic book.

You can read an excerpt here.

This pictorial and textual meditation on the meaning of time is based on the Einsteinian principle that our perception of time is relative. And yet each of us is faced with the challenge of making sense of it.

Subtitled By the Time You’ve Read This Sentence, 21 Children will Have Come into the World, this lavish paperback is not merely an encyclopaedia of data about the quantity which mysteriously gives everything on Earth a fourth dimension, including memory and the stamp of impermanence. There is astonishing ingenuity behind David Böhm’s conceptual approach to the illustrated reference book, which he has already successfully employed in his previous books exploring the functioning of the head, modern urban planning and the role of Antarctica in our planet’s ecosystem.

In Now Böhm introduces older school-age readers to the variable length of time and its influence on our inner selves, poses philosophical questions about its purpose and also teaches us to allow ourselves moments of meaningful boredom within that relativity, while time continues to flow steadily on, driven by laws it is not necessary – or perhaps even advisable – for us to know about. The pace at which the book examines its subject is no less dynamic. Fun facts in the style of Dorling Kindersley alternate with collages and comic strips; a section in the form of a diary is followed by a striking visual call to action – in part an ecological one, so that we will still have something to measure with our timepieces in the future.
Age 9+

This colourful book about forgetting and remembering poses the fundamental question of where the experiences of early childhood disappear to.

While in the award-winning Typo and Skim (2016), the creators jokingly discussed with children the impact of entropy on the things around us, in their new book they are showing them what goes on inside the head. Fifthyear Jasmína bravely saves the memory of her cousin Jáchym, which someone stole from him the night after his second birthday party in the belief that such a small child would never remember it anyway. Does the villain intend to bargain with his haul like the Men in Grey that Momo fought in Michael Ende’s fantasy novel of the same name? Jasmína’s picaresque expedition into the landscape of Time Immemorial is flanked by lavish pop art backdrops of cerebral operations and institutions that would like to process their prey – and perhaps unravel the mystery of the body’s most important organ, at times so vulnerable and at other times so insightfully protective. The playful story will bring small children closer not only to scientific ideas about déjà vu or unconscious archetypes, but will also wittily point to “memories of the future” or evoke William Blake’s “The Tyger”, urging you not to let your ego become completely civilized. After all, memories – and especially those of innocent toddlers – cannot be stolen from us, because it is only thanks to them that every one of us is unique.

Age 10+

You can read an excerpt here.

What form does a memory take when it’s written by a twenty-year-old poet?

We first begin to take stock of our lives when we realize we are ageing and attempt to give voice to this. In Lubomír Tichý’s debut poetry collection, the twenty-year-old poet consciously looks back for the first time at what was, and for the first time captures in his own words all that has gone before in order to prevent it from becoming irretrievably lost. He wanders the landscape of the Polabí region where he lives, offering a personal take on how to live and survive in a small town. Paradoxically, this traditional approach appeals to each new generation, and each one attempts to express the loss of time in their own words. And so we are met with surprise and wonder, which are an inseparable part of poetry, in the same way as we admire the author’s attention to detail as he sets out to find all that has passed.

At the same time, Lubomír Tichý is neither a nostalgic nor an eclectic poet. He is just a shy, introverted narrator, playing with nostalgia without losing the perspective of a twenty-year-old. The most important thing about the collection is its ability to communicate to different generations. The poet doesn’t turn his back on the technology which is so essential to the younger generation, but he avoids getting caught in the trap of oversimplification. From the outset he wants to engage in a farreaching dialogue – which is a miracle constructed of small-scale records of material reality.

A visually striking and linguistically innovative steam-punk story for children about entropy and the ageing of things.

Typo and Skim are “imps-entropists” whose task is to make everything grow old in chaos under the reign of the Ravages of Time. Typo the imp attends the Things Ageing Primary School, where he learns how to wear down things to decay thoroughly. He especially focuses on making grammatical errors in books. However, when on a trip to the world of humans, he finds out that they do not like things ageing. Therefore, he and his friend Skim decide to stop the Ravages of Time… This large-format book with a beautiful graphic design and art style is full of sketches of instruments which are the basis of entropy.

The book was artistically prepared by an illustrator whose work includes the visual style of the popular Czech TV channel for children, ČT:D. Thanks to him, children can see a real desert, library, sweet shop or dump site. Everywhere they can enjoy various puns, plays on words and parodies prepared for them by the authors, but at the same time they can observe the Big Ravages of Time taking its toll and find out that stopping it is not advisable.

Download an excerpt in English here and German here.

Illustrations

This playful children’s tale with unusual characters – a coat and a handbag – wandering around Prague during the coronavirus pandemic will captivate the reader with its profound message of human solidarity.

The personifications of a coat and a handbag meet one day on a bus and together experience chance encounters with people and animals during a coronavirus winter in Prague. Marka Míková enriches their deeds with a warm emotional glow, and the story builds towards the promise of a happy ending for both characters – the coat and the handbag – as well as the charming new friends they make in the city, such as a fisherman, a homeless man, a couple of curious senior citizens and a young couple expecting a baby. They all overcome their sorrows in a city where cinemas, theatres and restaurants are closed. Readers will be blown away by the atmosphere of the “time of coronavirus”, where deserted pubs, boats on the Vltava river and the atmosphere of the Lesser Quarter and the Old Town with their famous churches, buildings and libraries all have their place. As always, Galina Miklínová’s illustrations focus on amusing details, presenting specific images of Prague’s hidden corners, offering young readers a fresh perspective on these places.

About the authors:

Marka Míková (1959) is a writer, theatre director, musician and co-organizer of the project Loutky v nemocnici (Puppets in Hospital). She graduated in puppetry from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, specializing in directing and dramaturgy. She is the author of nearly twenty books and has been nominated for a Magnesia Litera Award four times. Her story Škvíry (Cracks, 2014) was awarded a Golden Ribbon for Tereza Ščerbová’s illustrations.

Galina Miklínová (1970) is an illustrator and artist and a director and screenwriter of animated films. She and Pavel Šrut have been long-term collaborators. The books they have created together include Pavouček Pája (Pája the Spider, 2001), Veliký tůdle (The Big “No Way!”, 2003), Příšerky a příšeři (Little Monsters, 2005) and the three-part series Lichožrouti (Oddsockeaters, 2008–2013). She has illustrated books by Eva Papoušková, Alena Mornštajnová and Petr Stančík, among others, and garnered numerous awards for her work, both in the Czech Republic and abroad.

An imaginative journey through the squats of Barcelona, where the rhythm of life is different.In the semi-autobiographical novel Cursed Are They Who Come, the narrator describes the time she spent in Barcelona’s squats. They mainly come alive at night – not least because the streets of Barcelona are unbearably hot during the day – and this night-time existence, filled with endless parties and altered states of consciousness, is described by the author using exceptionally imaginative language. This conjures up a picture of Barcelona’s squats as a city within a city which has its own rules. However, even this parallel world eventually begins to be infiltrated by outside influences such as social hierarchy and the desire for money. The fact that the author does not turn a blind eye to these aspects of the main character’s time in the squats ensures that her novel is not only a highly evocative piece of literature but also an incisive and sobering commentary on social structures and developments.

We are all a little racist in this global village called the Earth.

Love in the Time of Global Climate Change is set in Bangalore in India, where the main character, Tomáš, arrives for an international science conference. There he not only has to contend with culture shock, the xenophobic attitudes of his international colleagues and feelings of rootlessness, but also his own helplessness and bittersweet memories. He searches for the roots of stereotypes in his own thinking, but due to the consistent use of the second-person plural, it is ultimately the reader he is addressing. The narrator juxtaposes the reality of India with Tomáš’s experiences from the sharply contrasting country of Iceland, where a first-person narrative appears. These are the sections about Tomáš’s love story with an emancipated Indian woman. The protagonist is preoccupied with the problems of the contemporary world: the lack of academic rigour, the nation’s past, xenophobia, racism, migration, cultural stereotypes and the differences between East and West. At the same time, he is a modern-day outcast, a person without a home or anchor.

Pánek’s distinctive style, giving the impression of a hurried and spoken form of language, flows naturally, maintaining the tension and heightening the absurdity of a chaotic world. The readability and believability are bolstered by the author’s experiences as an émigré, thanks to which the novel reads almost like a travelogue.