Is your Dad on fire?
A novel about how politics is always personal—and sometimes deadly.
A man set himself on fire in front of the Chamber of Deputies. It is not clear why, but it may be linked to an appeal by an extremist populist. Lada is a successful writer—and the daughter of the man who committed protest suicide. She is grieving, she is angry, and she is investigating her father's motives. At the same time, however, she has been lacking good subject matter lately, and the publishing house is already asking for a book. And so the inevitable happens: the family investigation gradually turns into a manuscript. And Lada's life turns into hell, because she must confront the populists, a divided society, and her own complicated relationship with her father. Viktorie Hanišová's novel, and that of her heroines, is a dive into the depths of contemporary society and its neuroses.
What they wrote about the book:
In her new novel, Viktorie Hanišová remains true to the theme of family tragedy. This time, however, it is not the centre of the prose, but its perspective: it is a tragedy that is both personal and political. The author thus enters the field of social literature—and does so more than impressively.
- Zdeněk Staszek, editor
While stories used to pour out of me on their own, now it doesn't flow so well. Should I force it? Does an author have the right to steal other people's personal stories and cobble them into a text? Is it justifiable to step back from the world and look at it as a source of inspiration? Along with politics, these are the themes that are shaking me. Once I had this figured out, it only took a few weeks and the manuscript was finished.
- Viktorie Hanišová, author
Viktorie Hanišová
(born 1980) is a prose writer and translator. She studied English and German Studies at Charles University. She made her writing debut in 2015 with the novel Anežka, about the dysfunctional relationship between a mother and her adopted daughter, influenced by hidden racism. This was followed in 2018 by the novel Houbařka (Mushroom-Picker), which develops the theme of childhood trauma and abuse. She concluded her loose trilogy of books on motherhood in 2019 with the novel Rekonstrukce (Reconstruction), about the impact of a parent's suicide on a child. In 2020 she published a collection of short stories, Dlouhá trať (Long Haul), exploring various forms of life crises. A year later, she published the book Beton a hlína (Concrete and Clay) (2021), in which she uses interviews to explore the possibilities of living in cities. Her latest novel Neděle odpoledne (Sunday Afternoon) (2022) returns to the theme of suppressed family trauma.
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| Code: | AK1J507 |