Vladislav Vančura: Markéta Lazarová

Markéta Lazarová is one of Vančur's best-known novels (to which the excellent film adaptation certainly contributed). Strictly speaking, it's not really a novel: This is not about a specific place and time, nor is it about the accuracy of the period realities. It's a balladic love story from the time of the Troubles, when the king sought the safety of the roads and sent his troops against the robbers. Here, in an unspecified period of the Middle Ages, Vančura finds the ideal framework for his poetic parable about the greatness and beauty of a free man, unbound by convention, which is as much love as hate, strong emotion as well as cruelty, loyalty as betrayal. A sequel reading from 1960.