Vrtit se Skaleck Veronika (2024)

This novel begins on the first day of 1968, as Pardubice awakens after the New Year celebrations and Kateina celebrates her eighteenth birthday. Pavel travels by train from Prague to Pardubice, where he studies at university, and the two meet on a freezing day in January. They experience their first great love amid the enthusiasm of the Prague Spring, a time of reforms and an emerging civil society. Both become directly involved in the events around them: Kateina through her fathers work as an official on the district national committee, and Pavel through his writing for a revived student magazine. After a brief period of freedom, anger and disappointment follow the August occupation. The political events of the following year irrevocably affect Kateina and Pavels relationship. For many years afterward, they remember the end of the 1960s and ask themselves whether they would have made different decisions if they could return and live through everything again.