Miluj bližního svého / Love and War – Mulick Sumit (2012)

The novella by Indian author Sumit Mullick, published in a bilingual Czech-English edition, marks the first step of this intriguing author into the realm of Czech readers. To be a writing rebel, one must have imagination. One must be a rebel with imagination. Sumit Mullick is such a personality. He introduces us to a world of fantasy with entirely real problems, which he portrays in a way that makes us laugh and fear at the same time. The novella Love Thy Neighbor speaks to Czechs as if from the heart. To Czechs, most of whom do not need the church or restrictive laws for their lives, but value ordinary human freedom and worldly joys even more. If it had been written by a Czech author, we would have found it amusing, but the fact that it comes from the pen of an Indian writer who speaks 'our language' gives it an unusually spicy flavor. It reaches us in this form of a message that we tend to dismiss, yet it forces us to reflect due to situations heightened to the absurd, not allowing us to escape, hitting us in the eyes and shouting at us from the pages. You will have a great time reading it. The novella is originally part of a broader collection of stories with the (untranslatable into Czech) title 'Fairyish Tales,' which are somewhat stories of the unbelievable reality. The title Love...