Žítkovské bohyně
by Kateřina Tučková
Description
A fascinating tale of the female soul, magic and a part of Czech history kept hidden.
In the heights of the White Carpathians, dotted sparsely across the hills, there are a number of crouched buildings. Everything is far away, which is why, so they say, certain women there have succeeded in preserving knowledge and intuition the rest of us have lost, which they have passed from generation to generation for centuries. They are known as goddesses, because they are able to connect with God and ask for His help. And His interventions do help a little ... It is said of the goddesses that they see the future. So why haven’t they saved their own?
Dora Idesová is the last of the goddesses. She is reluctant to accept an outdated way of life and to read in drips of wax the futures of those who come to her, as her aunt Surmena did. But everything changes once she understands that personal circumstances she has always considered unhappy – being sent to a boarding school, Jakoubek’s institutional care, hospitalization an asylum in Kroměříž – is part of a carefully thought-out plan. It is the late 1990s, and in the archives of the Ministry of the Interior in Pardubice there is a file awaiting discovery – a file compiled by the State Security police on an enemy of the state, her aunt Surmena. A disbelieving Dora untangles details of the previously unknown fates of her family and other goddesses ...
Were the goddesses a danger to incredulous patients? Were they a genuine ideological threat to society in the years of Normalization? Or was the eradication of the last relics of paganism the work of common human envy and spite?
Awards:
Josef Škvorecký Prize 2012, Czech Bestseller Prize 2012, Magnesia Litera 2013 - Readers' award; Czech Book Award 2013 - Readers' Award, Premio Salerno Libro d’Europa 2018 (for the Italian translation of the book, published by Keller Editore)
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Rights Information
Foreign editions:
Ukrainian (Komora, 2014), Polish (Afera, 2014), Macedonian (Kultura, 2015), Romanian (Curtea Veche, 2015), Slovenian (Sanje, 2015), German (DVA, 2015), Slovakian (Tatran, 2015), Belarussian (Lohvino, 2015), Croatian (Fraktura, 2016), Hungarian (Kalligram, 2016), Bulgarian (Paradox, 2016), Serbian (Babun, 2016), Arabian (Sefsafa, Egypt, 2017), Italian (Keller Editore, 2017), Greek (Ikaros, 2019), Latvian (Jumava, 2019)
Rights sold to:
Lithuania (Gelmés), Spain (Errata Naturae/Editorial Periférica de Libros), Russia (Text)
Reviews
"It is a fascinating narration. A novel on a great women’s topic of faith in natural forces and incantation, a healing power of hope, but also of solitude, despair, cruelty and vengefulness. (...)
The Žítková Goddesses is among the most interesting books that have grown up in the Czech Republic on the field of novel in recent years. (...)"
Veronika Jurčová, kultura21.cz
"The story is masterfully composed, containing several stylistic planes that gradually become entwined in a single great picture. It shows us that lives do not need to be mundane, and a seemingly ordinary environment may hide great stories. I cannot remember when I last read a story with such a strong motif of realized vengeance in Czech literature. (...)"
Pavel Kotrla, Týdeník Rozhlas
"The Žítková Goddesses can be read as a book about an extinct folk tradition, as a polemic between a purely scientific world view and that stemming from understanding of nature and human soul. Or as a kind of folk murder tale revealing how hatred can survive in a warped mind for decades and destroy even those who have no idea of the original injustice. Or saying that a clearly lined life does not exist, that a chance always comes into play. Or a curse?
The Žítková Goddesses are a classical and fascinating narration whose rhythm is beneficially broken by quotations from archive materials or secret police records, always carefully linguistically characterized. (...) A remarkable novel."
Kryštof Špidla, Český rozhlas
From the reviews for the German edition (DVA, 2015)
"This novel excels in the subtlety of its composition and the variety of its stylistic and linguistic resources as well as by the uniqueness of its theme and its meticulous intertwining of fact and fiction. "
Olga Hochweis, Deutschlandradio Kultur – Lesart
"Tučková has written an enchanting, thrilling story which asks a number of questions of our past and present ideas about backwardness and progress and human and social categorization, and how and why we have explored knowledge. "
Martina Winkler, Zeitgeschichte Online
"The Žítková Goddesses, a novel by Czech author Kateřina Tučková, has a decidedly esoteric feel, yet it is actually more realistic and heavier on fact than a work of fiction tends to be."
Carolin Herrmann, Coburger Tageblatt, 19 November 2015
"Kateřina Tučková’s The Žítková Goddesses is a masterpiece. […]
Like the tightening of a screw, Dora advances towards her fate slowly and steadily. The novel’s ending is so surprising in its ruthlessness that we ask ourselves if we have imagined it. In the epilogue, the woods of Kopanice murmur and the branches of its spruces sway. “I caught myself wondering why they were moving when there was no wind.” Dora is no longer around to provide an answer. Nor is there an answer from Kateřina Tučková, whom we have to thank for this superb book."
Volker Strebel, Prager Zeitung
"A masterful blend of fact and fiction."
Der Standard (A)
Author Biography
Kateřina Tučková is a bestselling Czech author, playwright, publicist, art historian, and curator of exhibitions. Her books have been translated into sixteen languages.
Awards:
2019 / Gold Medal of Masaryk University in Brno
2019 / Brno City Award for literature
2018 / Premio Libro d’Europa, the Book Fair in Salerno, Italy
2017 / Human Rights Award awarded by the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes
2013 / Magnesia Litera – Readers’ Award for the The Zitkova Goddesses
2013 / Josef Škvorecký Award for The Zitkova Goddesses
2012 / Czech Bestseller Award
2010 / Magnesia Litera – Readers’ Award for The Expulsion of Gerta Schnirch
In total, more than 270,000 copies of the author’s book have been sold in the Czech Republic alone.
Host Publishers
Now Host publishes children’s, SF, fantasy and YA literature, too. Host has introduced to Czech readers the crime novels of Stieg Larsson, David Lagercrantz, Lars Kepler and Jussi Adler-Olsen. Books by Czech authors Alena Mornštajnová, Kateřina Tučková, Petra Soukupová and Jiří Hájíček have also become bestsellers. But Host can of course take pride in more than just its leading role in the sales charts. The content of its catalogue of publications is of remarkably high quality and includes many leading writers from abroad, including Olga Tokarczuk, Jeffrey Eugenides and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Czech writers including Jan Němec, Jakuba Katalpa and Matěj Hořava. Host provides opportunities for début authors, too.
View all titlesBibliographic Information
- Publisher Host
- Orginal LanguageCzech
- ISBN/Identifier 9788072945283
- Publication Country or regionCzech Republic
- FormatHardback
- Pages455
- ReadershipGeneral
- Publish StatusPublished
- Copyright Year2012
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