Kudy šel anděl

(Where Was the Angel Going?)

“Balabán himself proves that he was the best Czech (albeit so very ‘un-Czech’) contemporary writer.”

— Ex Libris Marta

About the Book
Original Title Kudy šel anděl
First Published2003
PublisherVetus Via, Brno
Rerelease2005
PublisherHost, Brno
Pages 184
Rights Sold
PolandAfera – Wroclaw
North MacedoniaGoten – Skopje
Hungary Noran Libro – Budapest
United KingdomGlagoslav – London

The story begins in the 1970s in an Ostrava housing estate, where Martin Vrána grows up alongside various labor migrants and uprooted families. We fragmentarily follow his life journey from a hairy high school student experiencing his first love, through a promising career as a translator to personal failures, marital crisis and life disillusionment. Martin Vrána takes stock of his life before and after the regime change and recognises how disillusionment, disappointment and fatigue slowly creep into youthful exuberance. But despite all that, here we are and actually not much has changed.

“Somewhere in the cosmos there are happier places,” muses Martin Vrána, the hero of Jan Balabán’s novel Where Was the Angel Going?. Martin, like the survivor of a shipwreck, strives to shore up his vital resources amidst the billows of a hostile inimical world, which constantly advance and threaten to wash away everything he holds dear.

Where Was the Angel Going? is a novel made up of forty-six linked stories. As always, Balabán’s prose is so vivid that the reader can practically taste the “honey and dust,” which are the characteristic flavours of Ostrava. And yet, in its lyrical message of love and friendship as basic human needs no less critical than air and water, Where was the Angel Going? is nonetheless an eminent universal novel. Everyone will find him or herself in these pages, as we are all of us descended from that first pair of exiles, Adam and Eve.

“While certainly grim, Balabán tells his story really well in his forty-six episodes. He clearly has a message – it was really grim back under the Communists and while it is better now, it is not hugely better.”

— The Modern Novel

“Balabán continues to be a passionate storyteller. Each chapter in itself forms a meticulously piece on its own.”

— iLiteratura

“There is some beauty in this heartbreakingly sad novel. And pain that wounds to the depths of the heart, drawing hidden emotions out of a person. ‘Where Was the Angel Going?’ is a novel that you experience with every piece of your soul. And Balabán himself proves that he was the best Czech (albeit so very ‘un-Czech’) contemporary writer. What a pity that he will not write anything more.”

— Ex Libris Marta

Translations