kraloup – Satiricko-mystifikan novela, v n nic nen nemon Padevt Tom (2025)

This Czech-language satirical novella follows forty-six-year-old Drahlen, a man with an unusually vivid imagination to whom strange things happen. Who else might see a surrealist image in the skin on the surface of his cocoa? His jobs are no more ordinary, and although he has experienced several relationships of varying length and depth, he has ultimately remained alone, struggling to be the only single person in his extended family. Then a woman at a nightclub unexpectedly captivates him. Over the following days they exchange text messages, and Drahlen soon constructs an image of the perfect relationship out of his own unfulfilled desires. Is his intuition correct? There is so little certainty in his life. This satirical-realist, sometimes absurd novella balances on the boundary between grotesque comedy and psychological fiction, where nothing is certain.