What do you think, what do they see?

What happens when you bring a dog home from the street? You feel like you saved him. But what does he think about it? They will declare war on you. Perhaps also because the country in which you live together has been at war for a while now, and all of your lives are suddenly in constant tension and motion. The dog didn' t need it at all, it' s starting to dawn on you too. He could live peacefully on the territory of a failing factory. But you decided to save him. And so you have no choice but to ask how he perceives the situation, and to repeat as the hero of Alena Machoninová' s novel-essay: " What do you think they see? "

It' s a book about coexistence - interspecies rather than interpersonal. About how it often fails due to a lack of empathy, an inability to accept that the other person (whether human or animal) perceives reality differently. Similar to Hella (2023), the author blurs the boundaries between genres, between reality and fiction, and offers a world seen through other people' s works of art. The fragmented novel narrative is held together by short essays about books, performances, and paintings that work with a human perspective on the animal, predominantly canine, world. Among their heroes are Beuys' s Little John, Márai' s Čutora, Vladimov' s Ruslan, Virginia Woolf' s Flush and many others. But more than dogs, they are also about understanding others.