Every relationship can end in infidelity, every neighborhood in a mad feud, every dream of success in failure. And it doesn’t matter how much the spouses loved each other at the beginning of their relationship, where the roots of endless petty squabbles lie or how much genuine talent each person has. In her book of short stories, Simona Bohatá plays out the fates of her characters mercilessly, yet with a clear sense of perspective and understanding as if—despite the passage of time—she were still sitting on the old merry-go-round between apartment blocks. Cowardly heroes will always be with us after all, because it is we ourselves who stumble over the roots of our own doubts, inadequacies and even occasional acts of heroism.

“Doing Time on the Balcony,” translated by Alžběta Belánová, was featured in B O D Y.

Published in 2023 by Host Publishers in the Czech Republic.
200 pages / 135 x 205 mm

Communist Prague of the 1980s was a closed, gray world in which, for some, freedom had to be carved out in hidden places and unlikely communities. Young Beny leaves home to escape a violent father and finds refuge at a scrapyard run by a man known as the Fabrikant. Alongside Hany, an invalid, the drifter Julča and his brother Víťan, he becomes part of an odd surrogate family in which everyone harbors secrets and has a dark side. Beny needs to avoid military service, make some money, and find both work and a place to live, but above all he needs time to devote to his one true passion, photography. During the “real socialism” of the early 1980s, what might seem childishly simple today was a shady, if not downright illegal adventure – especially if you were barely twenty and didn’t take anything too seriously.

An excerpt from the novel, translated by Alžběta Belánová, was featured in Asymptote Journal.

Published in 2021 by Host Publishers in the Czech Republic.
368 pages / 135 x 205 mm