Vítr, tma, přítomnost

In the first chapter the narrator decides to get to the bottom of an old family event. In the 1940s his grandfather, an engineer and talented designer at the ČKD works, was taken by the German secret police somewhere into the Reich and pressed to collaborate. After refusing several times he came home unharmed, only to die inexplicably in his flat the next morning. The search through Czech and German archives soon leaves the public reading rooms for the uncertain memories of witnesses, second-hand reports and secret-service disinformation, opening onto the inner workings of the apparatus of power and a sprawling mosaic of private and global events that together form a difficult picture of the present.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

715 pages in the original

Genres

Autofiction, Historical, Politics (assigned by AI)

Set in

Czechia, Germany

First published

2014 by Druhé město

Author's age

49 when first published

ISBN

9788072273485 (original)