Fiction

Petra Soukupová

Things Whose Time Has Come / Věci, na které nastal čas

Petra Soukupová (born 1982) is one of today’s most successful Czech writers. She has published six books for adults and three for children. She has won or been shortlisted for many prizes; her books appear regularly on the bestseller lists and have been published in eleven languages. Petra Soukupová also works as a dramaturge and screenwriter. A feature-film adaptation of her short story “On Short Leash” / “Na krátko” from the volume To Disappear / Zmizet was premiered in 2018.

Life can’t be planned, or even prepared for… Again, Petra Soukupová has put the everyday life of a family under the microscope.

Alice and Richard have been living together for fifteen years. Theirs was maybe never a great love, or, if it was, maybe this love has been extinguished by the humdrum everyday. In any case, they should stay together for their two children, Charlie and Lola. Now twelve, Charlie is starting to have more than he can take of his parents. Lola, ten, wants nothing in the world more than a dog. With everything muffled by the soft blanket of routine, nothing terrible happens to anyone. You wouldn’t call it happiness, but you can live with it.

But then Richard falls in love — deeply and passiona tely. It seems to him that he has never known anything like it; then again, he may be going through a midlife crisis. Alice doesn’t much care one way or the other. But all certainties are blown, and Charlie and Lola must think a thought no child likes to think. Is Richard going to leave them? Whatever happens, nothing will be as it was.

to be published in November 2020

novel

hardback

360 pages

isbn 978-80-275-0390-2

Jakuba Katalpa

Zuzana’s Breath / Zuzanin dech

Jakuba Katalpa (born 1979) is author of five books. Her novella Is Soil to Be Eaten? / Je hlína k snědku? was shortlisted for a Magnesia Litera award in the Newcomer of the Year category (2007) and the novel The Bitter Sea / Hořké moře for the Jiří Orten Prize (2009). Katalpa’s novel The Germans / Němci received the Czech Book Award (2013) and the Josef Škvorecký Award (2013), and was shortlisted for a Magnesia Litera in the Prose cate gory (2013); it has been published in five languages including German.

Transport, concentration camp… After all she has been through, is Zuzana still capable of love? And does she even have any choice in the matter?

All the things that keep a person alive…

There are three of them. When they are children, the world is in balance. Later, everything changes. She loves one of the others. Both the others love her.

Zuzana Liebeskindová’s father owns a sugar refinery. She has a care -free existence, wanting for nothing and surrounded by love. Strands of burnt sugar drift about in the air. In the small town of Holašovice, the 1930s is a time of sweetness.

Zuzana enters adolescence during the German occupation. Because of her Jewish origins, her fate is predetermined: transport, concentration camp. Although Zuzana’s friends Hanuš and Jan both remain in Holašovice, their paths diverge. The war ends and Zuzana returns from the concentration camp, to the discovery that she has lost even more than she thought.

This dramatic novel does not examine questions of guilt and punishment, nor the debt demanded by great moments in history. With subtlety and surgical precision, Jakuba Katalpa examines what lies beneath the surface. Without passing judgement, she describes and records with great sensitivity those things that allow a person to go on.

published in August 2020

novel

hardback

309 pages

isbn 978-80-275-0241-7