Fjaka - Chorvatská sezona – Wojtaszeková Aleksandra (2025)

This Czech-language book explores Croatia beyond the azure sea and summer holidays. Aleksandra Wojtaszek spent more than ten years searching for the country’s true face, creating a book that can both move and amuse while opening the way to a deeper understanding of its regions. Drawing on her knowledge of the language, culture and local realities, she sensitively connects the present with history, legends with reality, everyday life with social traumas. The book includes chapters on football, the diversity of local languages and the richness of Balkan swearing, life on the mainland and the Adriatic islands, former presidents and generals, and a peasant king. The author also reflects on nationalism and other ideologies, explores South Slavic pop culture and fantasy, and examines the history of former Yugoslavia. She writes without sentimentality but with infectious enthusiasm, resulting in a complex and deeply human book. The mysterious fjaka in the title is a Dalmatian term for a state of mind in which a person quietly gazes into the distance and lets the heat take over. In Dalmatia, fjaka has become a way of life, and here it serves as a key to understanding Croatia.