Trying to reconcile patriotism with business sometimes feels like a marriage of convenience.
In the first part of the five-part family saga, Prague in the 1850s and 1860s comes to life, where, together with the property of the Born and Nedobyle families, the dissatisfaction of Czech patriots with the position of the Czechs and other Slavs in the Habsburg monarchy grows. The provincial town is slowly turning into a real Czech metropolis thanks to ambitious merchants such as Jan Born and Martin Nedobyl and under the influence of the industrial revolution. The end of the 1960s, however, brings a number of great historical events - the lost war with Prussia, the Austro-Hungarian settlement - as well as a number of dramatic moments in the lives of the novel's protagonists, whose colourful fates are depicted by the author with a respectable knowledge of contemporary conditions and a coveted ironic distance.
The first volume of the award-winning novel pentalogy on which the successful series Marriages of convenience and Bad Blood were based.