The Invincible Seven / Steiner aneb Co jsme dělali – Fahrner Martin (2016)

In telling the stories of several generations of one family, the author sketches the development of Czech society in the recent past. His version of history is replete with humour and hyperbole, as well as emotional depth. The protagonists live in difficult times. The book observes in some detail more than fifty years of history, opening in the pre-war period, giving a view of the plight of the German minority that remained in Czechoslovakia after the war, proceeding to the Russian occupation of the late Sixties and the subsequent persecution, before taking in 1989’s Velvet Revolution and beyond. The Invincible Seven received an enthusiastic response from critics and readers alike; it has been through two editions in the Czech Republic and has also been published in Slovenia (Mladinska Knjiga, 2005) and Germany (Piper, 2006). Martin Fahrner talks about the most important things in life in a manner that entertains and moves us. His claim that it’s worth playing for the good guys has the power to convince sceptics. In today’s world, that’s no small message. (From the Preface by Martin Reiner, Czech publisher and award-winning writer)