Herec

Mikuláš Mazel has what the book calls an absolute talent for acting: he can become anyone at all, more convincingly than any professional actor. He hires himself out for all manner of odd impersonations, and his picaresque adventures carry him through very different milieus. Slowly he understands that he has lived only his roles, feeding on other people's lives by copying them, and that his gift is less a blessing than a curse. Through him the novel holds up a distorting mirror to the recent decades of Czech life, when everyone tried to play the part expected of them, and asks what is left of the self in someone who can be anybody.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

310 pages in the original

Genres

Satire (assigned by AI)

Set in

Czechia

First published

2006 by Druhé město

Author's age

66 when first published

ISBN

9788072272488 (original)