Rudé paprsky severního slunce – Hejkalová Markéta (2014)

Czech woman Monika doesn't know what to do with her life. Then she travels with her husband, a researcher at an unnamed institute for the study of totalitarian pasts, to South Korea for several months. There, she falls head over heels in love with a man, knowing only that she has found her other half in him. She also knows that their great love will one day end because it cannot survive in the ordinary human world. Other heroines of the novel are also searching for eternal happiness and a man for life: Mrs. Song, who was forced by her husband to flee North Korea, successful Czech-Finnish entrepreneur Kamila, who had lost hope of meeting the right one, and the mysterious Miss Lee. Which of them will not survive? The cruel rays of the North Korean dictatorship reach all the way to Seoul, to the university campus, lost corners, and the purple room of the Ben Hur hourly hotel. But not only there. The women have no idea that they are merely puppets in a strange game, their movements controlled by unknown distant hands. Or perhaps too close? The book Red Rays of the Northern Sun is an original blend of a poignant love story and a thrilling detective novel, and it is read in one breath.