Zpívat bříze – Opatřilová Veronika (2026)

This Czech-language novel takes place on a remote island in northern Sweden, where a young art student arrives to spend several months with a prominent sculptor whose work he admires and to work on his final project. His presence disrupts the carefully constructed order of silence and solitude in which the much older artist has lived and hidden from the world for years. At first, distance and distrust prevail between them, but in the isolated setting surrounded by beautiful nature, their pasts, wounds and long-suppressed desires gradually come to light. The summer becomes a fragile and ambiguous encounter between two lonely people who unsettle and attract each other. Antonio brings with him the story of an unhappy love and his own vulnerability, while the narrator unexpectedly rediscovers forgotten emotions, inspiration and the pain from which she once fled. Shared coffee, quiet evenings by the sea and walks through the landscape slowly reveal deeper layers of their relationship and raise the question of whether it is possible to begin again. This lyrical story of contrasts—youth and age, naivety and cynicism, excessive effort and passivity—is above all a story about hope, the healing power of nature and an encounter that can change the way we see the past and the future.