Marxovka – Svobodová Martina (2021)

The novel Marxovka takes place in the second half of the 1970s in northern Bohemia, in a small industrial town on the edge of a brown coal basin, on Marx Street, in a house designated for demolition due to road construction. The main character of the novel is a six-year-old girl who experiences her childhood in Marxovka. She lives with her parents and sister in an old house behind the fence. Everything beyond the fence seems as if it doesn't belong to the town. In the former workers' colony, little Janinka is surrounded by people who are very different from the ordinary tenants of regular houses. Frau Špilfógl is a non-expelled German, Mr. Veselý survived the Holocaust, and the atmosphere of the house is enriched by a large Roma community. Janinka's grandmothers also play an important role; they smile so little and still live through events that are more than thirty years old. All of them form her childhood world. The little girl, thanks to her great imagination, penetrates into the past, into the haunting past of her loved ones. In her dreams and visions, she communicates with the dead to help the living understand what once happened.