Voliéry

(Aviaries)

Josef Škvorecký Award 2016

“… a lesson in literary phantasmagoria – not for the faint of heart.”

— The Arkansas International

About the Book
Original TitleVoliéry
First Published2016
PublisherDruhé Měto, Brno
Pages128
Rights Sold
United States Twisted Spoon – Prague

Few in Czech literature have been able to be so consistent in not writing needlessly. And few have invested as much of their lives in their writing as Zuzana Brabcová. Her final book, Aviaries, an intimate diary account of her neurotically hypersensitive perception of the world around us, is proof of this. As in her previous works, her work with language is spellbinding, pulsing from stark record to sublime metaphor, from lyrical postures to vulgarity, laying bare themes of loneliness and lostness in a world that has ceased to make sense. Records of the banality of everyday life shift here to general, symbolic, statements. Instead of being philosophical, they shock by exposing the grotesque – as if the present only generates black humour, bizarreness, puffery and emptiness. The pilgrim has inspected the world and has nowhere to go. The paradise of the heart, of one’s own inner self, is no more. Aviaries is a black pearl.

Aviaries was shortlisted for the Magnesia Litera Award 2017.

“With its sharp sense of the absurd but also grounded in the all too-real contemporary world, Brabcová effectively presents a dark-hued picture of the present.”

— The Complete Review

“’Aviaries’ is anchored in history, politics, satire, and humor. Stalin, Mozart, and even Proust lend height and sound to its metaphors. In turn, the news of the day, of every day in every place, lend the dose of reality against which all minds must end their race to feel. But what is most important about this, the last of Brabcová’s gifts, what makes it deserving of a place in the most minimalist of bookshelves, is its honest, overwhelming beauty, its celebration of language, imagery, and humanity, and its tribute to all of life, observed.”

— New York Journal of Books

“Composed like a twenty-first century flashback to Nikolai Gogol’s “Diary of a Madman,” Zuzana Brabcová’s excellent, final novel Aviaries is a surrealist collage of memories, anxieties, and fantasies.”

— Rain Taxi

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