Deov hl (2016)

Ji Hjek concludes his loose rural trilogy of moral unease with a novel set in the present day. Land, inherited fields and disputes over ownership play an important role against the distinctive landscape of the South Bohemian marshes, which gives the story both its atmosphere and historical context. Zbynk, a land administrator, meets his former love again after many years to help her with an apparently simple property-law problem. Returning to the countryside of his childhood and adolescence, he becomes entangled not only in the unclear circumstances of the land dispute but also in a personal and marital crisis. He struggles with insomnia, wanders through the landscape and cadastral maps, while the ghostlike figure of an eccentric eighteenth-century rural aviator hovers over him. At a decisive moment, Zbynk goes into battle with his face painted in war paint, fighting for what he believes is right, for the dreams of his childhood and so that he will not wake up one morning as someone else.