Makanna, otec divů (1945) – Weil Jiří (2026)

This Czech-language historical novel is the sixth volume of Jiří Weil’s collected works. Makanna, Father of Wonders first appeared around the turn of 1945 and 1946, although Weil wrote it during the first years of the occupation. It was originally intended to be published under the name of his friend Pavel Vyskočil, but the plan was thwarted by the Nazi authorities. Vyskočil was deported to Mauthausen concentration camp, where he was killed on the last day of 1941; the published novel was dedicated to his memory. In his afterword to the first edition, Pavel Eisner describes the work as a powerful, disciplined and vividly rendered piece of narrative prose, shaped by hunger, cold, poverty, persecution and suffering. Drawing on Weil’s former stay in a Central Asian region of Soviet Russia, the novel creates a convincing Oriental historical world inspired by nature, landscape and historical reports, while freely developing its central figure into a fictional story rather than a fictionalised biography. Makanna’s journey leads from his childhood in the village of Gaze near Merv to the fiery furnace at the fortress of Sam. The novel explores the difficulty of distinguishing truth from illusion, lies, deception and pretence, and presents slavery as both the embodiment of the abuse of humanity and a warning against evil. Růžena Grebeníčková also praised the novel and its central question of how to recognise what is genuine in people and things.