Řezníci – Pavel Jan (2022)

Seasoned storyteller Jan Pavel presents a new book with the story of an unbearable egotist and braggart named Maggi. Due to a naive romantic notion of the butcher's craft instilled in him by his father before his suicide, he leaves high school and enrolls in a vocational school to become the best butcher and restore the family business's glory. He quickly learns not only to perfectly debone and butcher but also finds two buddies with whom he throws alcoholic orgies, experiments with various drugs, and engages in increasingly dangerous, violent, and grotesque pranks. The symbolic backdrop for their morbid antics consists of meat processing plants, butcher shops, and the bleak spaces of the vocational school. Parties and erotic scenes alternate with drug visions and alcohol-induced delirium. The narrator of the story is Maggi himself, whose expressive butcher slang and dialogues full of dark humor place him alongside the heroes of A Clockwork Orange and Trainspotting, and like them, Maggi ultimately finds himself caught up in the evil he perpetrates. At the moment the story shifts into a terrifying nightmare, the author elevates the plot to a symbolic level to ask: where and from what does such evil arise?