Hives
What are we willing to sacrifice to survive? And do we still remain human afterwards?
Úlice is a town unhinged in space and time. It's even missing from some maps of the Czech-German borderlands. Its inhabitants have kept bees since time immemorial, their lives steeped in sweetness. But then a concentration camp is built right in the town…
Anežka, Běla and Helena grew up in Úlice and have known each other since childhood. Each had her own unassuming plans, which the presence of the camp and German soldiers dramatically changes. And with them, their characters too.
Jakuba Katalpa has written a ruthless and multi-layered novel that is not just another contribution to the historical fiction genre of the Second World War. It uncompromisingly explores questions of freedom, moral responsibility, and personal boundaries.
Reviews of the book:
Among the important qualities of the prose is the narration through the experience of the body, which perceives and records much faster than consciousness, and which is always necessarily situated in a specific context. Furthermore, there is a certain “freshness” of style and also an absence of unambiguous judgement of the characters’ actions, thanks to which much is left unsaid and the reader has enough space for themselves.
- Olga Słowik on the novel Zuzanin dech, iLiteratura.cz
Every situation has its charm and deserves to be described. This was discovered by Goncharov or Proust, for example. I also like that one situation can be viewed from several perspectives, like when you put a glass prism to your eye and the light begins to break down into a colour spectrum.
- Jakuba Katalpa, author
Jakuba Katalpa
(born 1979) after her exceptionally successful debut Je hlína k snědku? published the novel Horké moře (2009) and four years later the prose work Němci, for which she received the Josef Škvorecký Award, the Czech Book Award, and was nominated for the Magnesia Litera award. In 2017, the elaborate multi-layered contemporary novel Doupě was published, and her next novel Zuzanin dech (2020) has so far been her most successful with readers.
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| Code: | AUD05453 |
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