Rybí krev – Hájíček Jiří (2012)

The new novel by the author of Selského baroka, Rybí krev, continues Jiří Hájíček's line of rural prose (the short story collection Dřevěný nůž, the novels Zloději zelených koní and Selský baroko) and this time takes us to the South Bohemian countryside at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s. After fifteen years spent abroad, Hana returns in 2008 to the semi-submerged village on the banks of the Vltava River where she grew up, wanting to get married and become a teacher in the local one-room school. But everything is different – she stands alone in the deserted village square. However, she has the courage to look back, the determination to ask herself and the people who once meant a lot to her. A person over forty wants to sort things out within themselves, to finally close old matters and pains, Hana says when she meets her father, brother, and childhood friends after many years. After the successful novel Selský baroko (Magnesia Litera 2006 for prose), which dealt with the disintegration of traditional rural life in the 1950s, the author continues to explore the Czech village. Rybí krev is primarily a story about the disintegration of a family and a village under entirely different social circumstances. The theme of displacement and the demolition of villages due to the construction of a nuclear power plant seems thoroughly contemporary,…