Černá labuť – Veličková Helena (2023)

The novel takes place in an unspecified city in the Czech Republic, gripped by an epidemic of a strange viral disease. It is particularly insidious, as it also affects the brain. Those who survive the deadly course of the illness find their brains working differently than before. The healed person changes their view of the world. ***** The narrator of the story, Tereza Vizovská, lives somewhat alone with her nine-year-old son—an indigo child—since her husband works in Iraq as a war doctor in a Czech military mission. The letters that Šimon writes home from four thousand kilometers away contain outwardly difficult-to-understand connections to events in that Czech or Moravian city. ***** However, they make quite good sense to Tereza and her son, who have experienced the new illness. The somewhat estranged relationship of the couple is influenced by a third person—Mr. Fajst, known as Faust, whose unusual fate as an old bachelor and mysterious position in the city becomes the catalyst for dramatic events. Everything happens at just the right time and in exactly the way that the fates of the four individuals and the entire city ultimately fit together. The cruel test of the city’s inhabitants in the form of a pandemic, requiring inevitable sacrifices, gradually reveals itself as an opportunity for a fundamental transformation of the thinking of those who survived. ***** The novel was created during the coronavirus epidemic, which in...