A Sensitive Person: A Novel (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

Jachym Topol, Alex Zucker (Translated by)

$20.00

Publication Date: January 3rd, 2023

Publisher:

Yale University Press

ISBN:

9780300247220

Pages:

384

Description

A brutally funny, carnivalesque novel about love, death, and survival, from the Czech Republic’s greatest living author

Tab, an itinerant Czech actor, travels around Europe on the theater circuit with his partner, Soňa, and their two young sons, attending festivals and performing plays. Confronted with growing resentment toward foreigners, Tab decides to return home to the banks of the Sázava River, southeast of Prague. As soon as they arrive, Tab finds himself falsely accused of a terrible crime and forced to go on the run with his sons. Over the course of their journey, dodging authorities by car, foot, and raft, they encounter a motley cast of allies and enemies. The effects of Tab’s sudden reappearance and just-as-sudden disappearance ripple through the community, catalyzing a chaotic chain of events that reaches a final, raucous crescendo.

Hailed as “a picaresque romp of black humor and fantasy” (Times Literary Supplement), this is an unforgettable novel about discovering sparks of humanity even in the bleakest of places, in which love or the longing to find it lies around every bend.

About the Author

Jáchym Topol is a novelist, poet, dramatist, and journalist. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages. He lives in Prague. Alex Zucker has translated novels by such Czech authors as Topol, Bianca Bellová, Petra Hülová, and Tomáš Zmeškal. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Praise for A Sensitive Person: A Novel (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

“To have a translator with Zucker’s experience and expertise . . . is a real gift to readers (and critics). The benefits are apparent from the jump in A Sensitive Person, which opens with a rich and informative translator’s note.”—Cory Oldweiler, Los Angeles Review of Books

“Large, boisterous, and ambitious. . . . One of the more frenetic, rambunctious, and distinctive novels of recent vintage.”—D. W. White, On the Seawall

Shortlisted for the 2024 EBRD Literature Prize, sponsored by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development

“A superb, mesmerizing novel, reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, set against the background of the permanent Russian threat to Central Europe.”—Misha Glenny, BBC broadcaster and journalist

Praise for the Czech Edition:

“A picaresque romp of black humor and fantasy, the novel teems with extraordinary characters, but it is also urgently contemporary.”—James A. Hopkin, Times Literary Supplement

“As long as Europe inspires such works of art, all is not lost.”—Jorg Plath, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

“Fast-paced and dazzling.”—Dennis Wagner, Kultur.21