Malej NY – Krejčík Přemysl (2019)

A thriller about Czech hip-hop. Malej NY, that's little New York, or Nymburk, where hard drugs aren't really sold, but mainly people smoke weed and drink beer; on the street, you won't get shot by a nigga from another clan with a nine, but rather you might get punched in the face by skinheads or punks. Especially if you wear a straight hip-hop cap. Malej NY is a novel about being in 2005, being a teenager, and having a hip-hop band. Everything around you is fast and frantic, and in the end, it all turns out so tragically that after a few years, you find yourself on a couch at a psychotherapist's office. This is actually where Krejčík's story begins. As a therapeutic journey through a wild past to oneself. But past events appear in a different light from a distance — especially when a dead friend sends you a text message. It's hard to decide what is a bad joke and what is a threat. The faces from the former subcultural community have changed; people are unreadable, and memories seem to be the only key to the main thing: that the death of your first girlfriend was certainly not an unfortunate accident. Malej NY is the only contemporary novel about the hip-hop community, with a playlist that functions as a time machine. And death is a matter of seconds here, in Central Bohemia just as in big NY. And it is also ever-present.