Memories of an eel

Sára Fukuhara, who is half Czech on her mother's side and half Japanese on her father's, lives in Yokohama and researches the endangered Japanese eel. Her only friends are Mr Nakajima – the elderly owner of the house and aquarium shop where she lives – and her neighbour, Miyu, who never goes anywhere without her wooden sword and spends hours talking to an eel named Unagi. Sára's quiet life is turned upside down by a visit from Yuka Suzuki, her former classmate, who is searching for a missing colleague from her newspaper's editorial team. Long-forgotten events from the past gradually resurface, and all three women embark on a journey that presents them with one life challenge after another.

Vzpomínky na úhoře is a multi-layered novel set in Japan, combining fantastical elements with a quest motif to tell a story of friendship, courage, and the power of memory.

Anna Cima
(1991) was born in Prague and graduated in Japanese Studies from the Faculty of Arts at Charles University. She currently lives in Japan, where she researches post-war Japanese literature. Her debut novel, Probudím se na Šibuji (Paseka 2018), received significant acclaim from both readers and critics, winning the Jiří Orten Award and the Magnesia Litera for Discovery of the Year, among other accolades. Besides writing, Anna Cima also translates from Japanese – together with her husband, she translated The Tokyo Zodiac Murders by Soji Shimada (Paseka 2021).