Antihrdina – Salmela Alexandra (2019)

Twenty-seven-year-old Antti Hrdina arrives in consumerist KoroNova from a northern land called Utopia, which is based on ideological slogans and enormous sacrifices that allow people, animals, and plants to live in the embrace of Mother Nature. This country stands as a fortress on the front line of the battle against rapacious global capitalism. Local legends pathetically celebrate the brave founder Směrodárkyně, the heroine who made the utopia a reality. But does this society behave more like a dictatorship? And how true are the legends? Antihero is a book about cynicism and hope, about the loss of ideals and blind trust, about perverse maternal love and the search for a lost son, about journeys, trees, but especially about heroes. Does heroism still exist, and does it even have any meaning? Events seen through the eyes of several narrators weave together in an experimental textual collage overflowing with brilliant linguistic humor, gradually forming a similarly captivating stream as the KoroNova rivers Véna and Aorta, creating a darkly terrifying vision of a world perhaps not so far removed from our own.