Narušení děje – Kausc Emma (2024)

The 2024 Literary Critique Award for Prose.

Literature and life share a common denominator: story.

It is the 1970s, and William "Mole Man" Lyttle digs in a tunnel beneath his house, unearthing a sentence that will irrevocably influence the course of our world. "Our lives no longer feel like stories."

The protagonist of this autofictional novel is thirty-three-year-old Emma, who is trying to understand her Czech roots, cope with her mother's death, and find answers to questions surrounding the disappearance of her partner. The history around her does not flow; instead, it accumulates and shatters. Among the remnants, the water level rises catastrophically, and fires intensify. Emma navigates through them in an effort to step away from the love in which one wins and loses. In her narrative, we reach the end together or each in our own way; the story remains. Just like the question of whether storytelling can help a person cope with tragic events.

Emma Kausc's debut novel shows that the author is an original storyteller who knows how to narrate stories vividly and also reflect on them.