Tab is an itinerant actor who returns to the Czech Republic with his wife Soňa and their two sons after years of traveling through Europe. They settle in the village of Poříčí nad Sázavou, on the banks of the Sázava River, in central Czechia. But when Tab is falsely accused of a crime, he goes on the run from the Czech authorities with his sons. On their flight, they meet a host of colourful characters.
“The Last Goddess” is a novel about Dora Idesová, an academic who studies the traditions, lifestyle and history of the so called ‘Žítková goddesses’, female natural healers from the White Carpathians in the Czech Republic.
“HHhH” is a novel about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague in 1942. Heydrich was the highest-ranking SS officer in Czechoslovakia and one of the main planners of the Holocaust. The novel follows the preparation and the execution of the attack by Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš, two Czechoslovak soldiers, as well as the Nazi retaliation against the local population. The story is interspersed with the writer’s reflections on his research and writing process.
“Love Letter in Cuneiform” follows the story of Josef and Kveta, who meet at a lecture on deciphering cuneiform and eventually marry. After the Second World War, Josef is arrested for unknown reasons and Kveta turns to their friend Hynek for help. Many years later, during the Prague Spring, Josef is released from prison, and the couple attempts to rebuild their lives. But despite their enduring love, an unspoken distance lingers between them.
The novella “Transfigured Night” follows Leonora Marty, a famous dancer and choreographer who returns to Prague after the fall of communism. She wanders the streets of Prague, meets old acquaintances, and begins a romantic relationship with Thomas, whose family were ethnic Germans expelled from Czechoslovakia after the Second World War.
In Michal Viewegh’s novel “Bringing Up Girls in Bohemia”, the protagonist – a middle-aged married teacher – is assigned to give creative writing classes to the 20-year-old daughter of a rich and powerful man with connections to Prague’s criminal underworld. The classes are intended to help the young woman recover from a recent break-up, but over time, the relationship develops into to a secret love affair.
Kaspar Utz is a collector of porcelain figurines in Prague during the Cold War. Once a year, he is permitted to travel to the west to buy new pieces for his collection. Every year, he is tempted to remain in the west, but he cannot take his collection with him and thus stays in communist Czechoslovakia, a voluntary prisoner of his own collecting obsession.
“Love and Garbage” is a novel about a writer in communist Czechoslovakia who fails to find a publisher and becomes a street sweeper. As he cleans the streets of Prague, he reflects on his life, in particular his romantic struggles, torn between his wife and his mistress, and the guilt that haunts him. Along his way, he muses about literature, freedom, and his childhood in the Prague Ghetto.
“The Unbearable Lightness of Being” follows the intertwined lives of two couples and a dog during the Prague Spring of 1968 – a period of political liberalisation and hope in Communist Czechoslovakia, which was ultimately crushed by the invasion of Soviet tanks.
“I served the King of England” is a tragicomical novel about Dítě, an ambitious hotel waiter who works his way up and establishes his own hotel in Czechoslovakia – with the profits of a briefcase stolen from a Jewish ghetto. The novel recounts the little anecdotes of the main character, but also the broader history of Czechoslovakia in the 1940s, during the Nazi occupation and the early years of communism.