Barvy současnosti – Struhar Stanislav (2022)

In the book Colors of the Present, Stanislav Struhar not only follows up on the stories from Colors of the Past but also on the work Colors of the Future, which was awarded the Book Prize of the City of Vienna, bringing forth more prose filled with poetic empathy and intellectual passion. Intimately and with filigree precision, he narrates three compelling stories about the fates of people in today's Marseille and Vienna, and also presents his debut All the Beloved Colors, which he worked on thirty years ago in Vienna while still writing in Czech. In this captivating story, which tells of friendship among young artists, he already hinted at a distinctive style that he later developed in his German-language works. Familiar colors of foreign lands: When Florian arrives in Marseille to spend the last summer days at his aunt's house, memories of his childhood come flooding back. His stay in the city draws him into a past that also hides sorrow when he meets a childhood friend. Suddenly, he receives a message from Vienna. The lightness of colors: Adam has long suffered from not achieving the same success as his brothers, and when he loses his job, he leaves Prague and relocates to Vienna. He finds work in a department store, but starting over proves difficult. One day, he meets a Viennese girl who lives with her grandfather near the Vienna Woods. All the...