One night in 1968, on the eve of the Soviet invasion, 13 year-old Ondra and his younger brother Kamil are bundled into a coach bound for their father’s birthplace, a mountainous, forested village in northern Bohemia. But when they arrive it becomes clear that this escape promises its own perils, and the boys find themselves stranded in a rural community riven with petty suspicion and stained by prejudice, a borderland over which fleeing peoples, victims of genocide, and trigger-happy armies regularly tramp. Growing up in this dark, chaotic landscape, the two boys struggle to make a home for themselves, until a series of unexplained deaths push them to make bold decisions to ensure their survival.

The short summer of anarchy, the winter of our discontent, German autumn and Prague spring – if the seasons serve as a historical metaphor, then history becomes a cycle. The belief in progress must imagine time as linear; those who think in cycles always have the eternal return of the same thing in mind: the cancellation of history in natural history, in which every thaw exposes the snow-covered signs of earlier catastrophes. Yesterday’s snow becomes tomorrow’s toxic precipitation.

_{(Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)}

“‘Nightwork’ is thoroughly worked through and keeps its narrative strands on a short leash. A concise but precise main clause style and fast-paced dialogue, create atmospherically dense situations that almost seem like drama scenes and, despite all the fantasy, never lose their anchor in reality.”

— Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

“His novel is impressive and unforgettable it is imagination.

— Die Zeit

“Topol clearly set out to write an unconventional novel – and he more than succeeded.”

— The National

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