Rights Information

Foreign editions:

Slovenian (Mohorjeva Družba, 2019), Latvian (Izdevniecība Pētergalis, 2019), Polish (Amaltea, 2019), Bulgarian (SONM, 2019), Croatian (Hena Com, 2019), German (Wieser Verlag, Austria, 2020), Arabian (Ninawa, Syria, 2020), English (Parthian Books, Great Britain, 2020)

Rights sold to:

Hungary (Szláv Textus), Slovakia (Aktuell), Italy (Keller Editore), Greece (Alexandria), Macedonia (Muza), Romania (Casa Cărții de Știință)

Reviews

Reviews for the English edition of the book (Parthian Press, 2020):

Gemma Pearson, Wales Arts Review, 4. 9. 2020

Two in a Teacup, 2. 10. 2020

Blurbs from reviews for the Czech editon of the book (Host, 2017):

"A truly great reading experience. An author who can describe suffering, a very mature manuscript, so much skill on display, none of it just for effect. What's more, this book is a portrait of a town; it is a monument to Valašské Meziříčí. I can't remember the last time I met something like this in contemporary Czech prose. At last, a book you can really look forward to.

(…)

By turning Alena Mornštajnová to literature in her middle years, providence knew what it was doing. And with this splendid novel, she has returned the favour. Charged with maturity of view and verbal sophistication, it is at once a work of great suffering and loving conciliation."

Jiří Trávníček, literary scholar, critic and historian

"Mornštajnová’s great skill is in plaiting fates together, and then unplaiting them. She moves smoothly from one passage of time to another, and from one character to the next, without ever losing the red thread of her family story, and without demolishing the dramatic arc and tragic subtext of Aunt Hana’s lot.

A wonderful storyteller, her twists and points are exposed with the skill of a master."

Agáta Pilátová, Týdeník Rozhlas

"This story of three generations of Jews from Valašské Meziříčí is told with staggering virtuosity. The result has been achieved by conscientious preparation, use of primary sources and interviews with contemporary witnesses, as with the writing of a monograph for purposes of popular education. It takes a very disciplined author to apply such findings in a novel while resisting the temptation to produce a catalogue of facts. Such an author might read three contemporary newspaper articles to inform a single-word description of a minor character. And in so doing, this author makes her novel life-like and believable. […]

She has a keen sense of the weight of every word and the rhythm of sentence and paragraph, and she can describe the finer nuances of situation. […]

As the book begins, danger is palpable in the play of the children, as though their games prefigure the basic guiding principle of the story – the ill-considered step. A sequence of poor decisions. After the first, a thousand more, so the story has no need of dramatic twists. The jigsaw-like composition, changes in narrator and time and interchanging of first- and third-person narration all serve to increase the tension to stunning effect, retarding then accelerating the pace of the plot, placing what we have already seen in new contexts, and – like a stereograph – giving a true picture of events by bringing together two or more points of view.

Hana is one of the best books about the Holocaust this writer has read. […]"

Petr Kukal, Lidové noviny

"She demonstrates abilities to encompass long periods of time, construct a text with an eye to drama and enchant the reader."

Pavel Kotrla, Týdeník Rozhlas

Author Biography

Alena Mornštajnová (1963) is a Czech fiction writer and translator. She wrote four novels and one book for children. Alena Mornštajnová studied English and Czech at Ostrava University. For years, she worked as English teacher. She also translates from English. Alena Mornštajnová lives in Valašské Meziříčí.

She made her debut in 2013 with the novel Slepá mapa (Blind Map), and her second novel Hotýlek (The Little Hotel) came out in 2015. It was primarily due to her third novel, Hana, from 2017 that Alena Mornštajnová became one of the most popular contemporary Czech writers. Up to now, Hana has been published in eight languages, and six more foreign editions are under preparation just now. Alena Mornštajnová has won several awards: among others, her novel Hana received the 2018 Czech Book Award and became the 2017 Book of the Year on the website Databáze knih (Database of Books). Her latest novel Tiché roky (Years of Silence, 2019) went to the top of the national bestseller list immediately after publication.

In total, more than 400,000 copies of the author’s books have been sold in the Czech Republic.