Pets

The novel is a fantastic allegory, which the author herself describes as a “prison fairy tale”. With witty hyperbole, linguistic invention and satire, it portrays life behind bars – but from the perspective of animals. The allegorical fable thematises the world of a women's prison (Meow-schwitz) through the stories of its animal inhabitants – mainly cats, but also crows, dogs and rats. The main character is the free-spirited Cat (Don Catleone), who leads a gang in the prison yard.

His life is disrupted by the arrival of the white crow Irča – a naive, kind-hearted and deeply human character who brings with her the mark of freedom and vulnerability. The noble British cat Šanelka also enters the story, arriving in the prison environment to look for her arrested owner. Together with Irča and the Cat, they embark on a seemingly impossible mission: to rescue a human from prison. This journey becomes a kind of metaphysical pilgrimage, in which a hint of Orwellian satire, children's fairy tales and Russian grotesque are intertwined.

Published with an afterword by the translator Kateřina Šimová.