Transfigured Night Monkov Libue (2023)

In 1992, three years after the fall of communism, Czechoslovakia is preparing to divide into two independent states, and renowned dancer and choreographer Leonora Marty returns home. Back in the country she left behind, she must confront three relationships: with the city of her youth, with her homelands past, and with her new romance with a German admirer, Thomas Asperger. As a descendant of expelled Sudeten Germans, Thomas connects all three relationships inextricably. First published in German in 1995, the novel tells the story of a heroine who shares her fate with its author, guiding readers through her hometown and the contemporary world. Transfigured Night is a masterpiece of Czech literature, inspired by the distinctive styles of Leo Janek and Thomas Pynchon, and a testament to the fact that national literature need not be written in a single language.