Velice lehká smrt – de Beauvoir Simone (2022)

A novel from 1964, which was published in Czech only once in 1967, transcended its time in many ways. The author describes the last few weeks of her mother's life. The almost reportorial and naturalistic depiction of a person's physical and mental decline is intertwined with an assessment of the relationship between mother and daughter. The care that Simone tries to provide for her mother in the last weeks is a testament to her humanity, her desire to rise above all the bad, to prepare her for a truly bearable departure, but at the same time, it is a significant spiritual exercise. The author is icily honest, as if she understands that only truthfulness in her relationship with her mother will allow her to break free from the layers of stereotypes, family falsehoods, and toxic relationships. She thus speaks for all daughters who are grappling with their broadly understood emancipation, stepping out from behind the Shadow cast upon them by their mothers. Nevertheless, she maintains tenderness, love, compassion, and patience, amplified by her mother's ongoing physical decline. The remarkable novel A Very Light Death by Simone de Beauvoir speaks perhaps more than it did at the time of its creation, nearly sixty years later. It is not only a report on the last days of life, but also interesting in terms of the technical and medical aspects of the entire process and the development that occurs in this...