Radka Denemarková
Radka Denemarková (b. 1968) Novelist, dramatist, TV screenplay writer, translator, essayist
The author has produced a debut of extraordinary maturity, which has not gone unnoticed in the international arena. In June 2005, Radka Denemarková was invited to the European First Novel Festival in Kiel, Germany.
A já pořád kdo to tluče [Who's That Banging on the Door?]
(novel, 2005, 178 pp, hardback, ISBN 80-7227-219-5)
This eccentric, grotesque, and thrilling story of a murder and a fatal connection between a man and a woman who are both drowning in the misgivings of their solitude might have happened anywhere. Its theatre setting provides a unique space for the expression of deep passions and hysteria. The theatre is a stage on which the curtains will draw for ever – for the energetic actors, the passive voyeurs, the backstage manipulators. There is no possibility of actors stepping in to play our lives. We are not acting in a one-man-show. Our past and our distress cannot be stripped off like a costume. Even the smallest ‘role’ of one’s life should be played with the utmost conscientiousness. Visiting director Buch has only a strange suspicion that this is so, but writer and dramatist Birgit knows it very well. And those whose knowledge is so true are in the danger of being silenced.
A truly mature and ripe first literary fruit, which contains a convoluted parable: a dark image of mankind, with a demonic ring of events that cannot be broken.
Reviews:
"If we take the Hrabal-like division of Czech literature into works from the coffee house and works from the beer hall, this writer is of the former kind. A story of fate in the rarefied atmosphere of the theatre with the media in close attendance, where matters existential are surprisingly insistent, cut through with hints at the truth and mixed allusions for the connoisseur… While the author deals us a world which is acrid and unforgiving, we are not misled by the game of hide-and-seek going on behind the protagonists."
(výběr-knihy [Books Selection], Salon)
"The book is full of that dark, brutal violence which is hidden inside perhaps every one of us; that the world still exists is proof that most of us succeed in keeping it under control. Buch and Stadtherrová let loose their beasts because their ailing souls and wills brook no alternative. The image of the hell they arouse is a powerful warning - this, indeed, is how things might be always and everywhere. The effect is heightened by Denemarková's thoughtful, sumptuous use of language.
(áš, Týdeník Rozhlas)
"A story which at first sight is a classic detective story with the ground plan of a murder investigation turns out to be an impressively pure, sensitive and philosophical moral tale."
(Libor Vodička, Literární noviny)
"This is not a book one reads for entertainment, even though it bears some of the features of a detective story. It is a successful work of Czech literature for the more demanding reader."
(Jan Šícha, Literární noviny)
Rights sold to:
Európa, Hungary
Notes:
Sample translations into English, German, French and Polish available.
A já pořád kdo to tluče / Who's That Banging on the Door?
