Oslava

At eighty-three, a man learns that he is fatally ill, while life in his ordinary family carries on as before around him. The book is less about illness and death than about the calm way he accepts what is coming and keeps his mind on daily things, among them his love of language: he and his son go on translating Maupassant and Kafka. His last months are told three times over, first in his own clipped diary, then in his son's more expansive observations of the same days, and finally by a narrator who draws the two together and lets this world and the next run into each other.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

159 pages in the original

Genres

Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

Czechia

First published

2009 by Revolver Revue

Author's age

61 when first published

ISBN

9788087037171 (original)