The inner drama of takes place in a psychiatric hospital; the “detox” becomes a place of exposed interpersonal relationships, a place of agonizing questions and answers to life’s traumas, in which the outside world enters as a disturbing or soothing element. From the walls and ceilings, which seem to open up into another unknown space, also derives the author’s strong theme, which is the “examination” of our determination or inability to come out of ourselves and (in Levinasian terms) to acknowledge the superiority of the other; of equal weight is the critical look at the ability of the individual, required by society, to stand in an ambiguous dialogue with the multiplicity of the world.

The sometimes almost fantastical narrative blurs the distinction between the so-called real and dream worlds, between the inner experience of the characters and their apparently objective image. The sequence of often sarcastic scenes, in which the painful corners of the human desire for freedom are opened up, constrained, broken, limited again and again (see the title “Ceilings”), is a kind of imaginative exploration of human possibilities and “impossibilities”.

“Zuzana Brabcová’s novel is a literary event, an extreme work, exceptional in its condensation and poetry. It is – at least for me – a literary event not only of the past year.”

— Respekt

“Zuzana Brabcová is brilliant at bringing the experience of a severely challenged mind to those who have never been affected. Perhaps her book could even serve as a practical guide for students of psychiatry. Personally, I have yet to encounter a literary work that consciously seeks to do this and succeeds in doing so so evocatively.”

— iLiteratura

“Zuzana Brabcová wrote a powerful book from a psychiatric hospital.”

— Hospodářské noviny

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