Ceilings

The detox ward of a psychiatric hospital brings together several women from very different walks of life, and the novel is less a plot than the way they see, describe and judge what they are going through. Relationships there are raw, and old traumas raise painful questions, while the outside world breaks in now soothing, now disturbing. The walls and ceilings of the ward seem to open onto some other, unknown space, and the book asks whether we can ever get outside ourselves and accept the other. Lyrical passages alternate with blunt naturalism, and the border between the real and the dreamed keeps dissolving.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

198 pages in the original

Set in

Czechia

First published

2012 by Druhé město

Author's age

53 when first published

ISBN

9788072273263 (original)

9788088628057 (Twisted Spoon Press, Czechia)