Bøger i Czech Literature serien

Following the success of 2005 s Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century, Patrik Our edni k again confounds expectations with what seems, on the surface, to be a detective novel...

The End of the World Would Not Have Taken Place is Czech author Patrik Ourednik's second work originally written in French. Like the author, the narrator is a writer and translator writing a book about the end of the world, in which he reflects on life, death, war, and divine action to form a biting social critique.

Angel Station weaves together the brutal and disturbing fates of an addict, a shopkeeper, and a religious fanatic as they each follow the path they hope will lead them to serenity: drugs, money, and faith.

The Golden Age is a fantastical travelogue in which a modern-day Gulliver writes a book about a civilization he once encountered on a tiny island in the Atlantic. The islanders seem at first to do nothing but sit and observe the world, and indeed draw no distinction between reality and representation, so that a mirror image seems as substantial to them as a person (and vice versa); but the center of their culture is revealed to be "e;The Book"e; a handwritten, collective novel filled with feuding royal families, murderous sorcerers, and narrow escapes. Anyone is free to write in "e;The Book,"e; adding their own stories, crossing out others, or even ap- pending "e;footnotes"e; in the form of little paper pouches full of extra text-but of course there are pouches within pouches, so that the story is impossible to read "e;in order,"e; and soon begins to overwhelm the narrator's orderly treatise.