Slepá mapa – Mornštajnová Alena (2013)

Anna, Elizabeth, Agnes. Three women, three generations, one family, and many twists of life, traumas, and secrets. It is not often that a manuscript arrives in the editorial email inbox where it is clear from the very first paragraph that this is a book that must be published. The novel saga by the previously unknown Alena Mornštajnová is just such a unique case. The story begins before World War I, when Anna, the narrator's grandmother, leaves against her parents' wishes with her chosen one, Antonín, to a border town in northern Bohemia. As if the initial letters of their names express the hope that here they can begin a new life together. The name, however, also symbolizes what we cannot choose, what is given to us as a family legacy that we always carry with us despite all our determination to change. Or perhaps fate, whose trials we have little influence over. A new beginning soon transforms into a struggle for survival when Antonín is wounded at the front and Anna contracts tuberculosis. A quarter of a century later, another new beginning awaits their daughter Elizabeth, who must flee from the German army occupying the border, and after another half-century, a dramatic twist of fate — this time in the form of an officer from the StB — will also change her life...