Kocovina – Beran Stanislav (2019)

In the novella Kocovina, the Sudetes are depicted as a place where people remain only because they have no other option. A place full of stagnation, whose inhabitants have lost interest in the rest of the world and are starting to resemble animals. Recent history is still present in the village near the Austrian border: the character of the local madman Honzík, the son of a Czech woman and an expelled German named Hans, is the focal point of the narrative. Around him, the stories of others unfold, most often locals, but also Austrians who come here for cheap shopping and cheap sex, or tourists who want to exchange their office for nature for a while. From the end of the war to the present, individual drawers of fates open before us – the world of small, ordinary people living or barely surviving in a place that has been forgotten.