Rybí krev – Hájíček Jiří (2014)

This Czech-language novel continues Jiří Hájíček’s series of rural fiction, following the short-story collection Dřevěný nůž and the novels Zloději zelených koní and Selský baroko. It takes readers to the South Bohemian countryside at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s. After fifteen years abroad, Hana returns in 2008 to the partly flooded village on the banks of the Vltava where she grew up, hoped to marry and dreamed of becoming a teacher at the local one-class school. Everything has changed, and she stands alone in the deserted village square. Still, she finds the courage to look back and question herself and the people who once meant so much to her. Meeting her father, brother and childhood friends, Hana wants to settle old matters and wounds. The novel explores the collapse of a family and a village amid the displacement and demolition of communities caused by the construction of a nuclear power plant. Rather than being an environmental novel, it is an engaging human story about three friends scattered around the world, shaped by a longing for family unity and by the strength of love and forgiveness.