Jáchym Topol

#2

'The devil had his workshop in Belarus. That's where the deepest graves are. But no one knows about it.' A young man grows up in a town with a sinister history. The concentration camp may have been liberated years ago, but its walls still cast their long shadows and some of the inhabitants are quite determined to not to allow anyone to forget. When the camp is marked for demolition, one of the survivors begins a campaign to preserve it, quickly attracting donations from wealthy benefactors, a cult-like following of young travellers, and a steady stream of tourists buying souvenir t-shirts. But before long, the authorities impose a brutal crack-down, leaving only an 'official' memorial and three young collaborators whose commitment to the act of remembering will drive them ever closer to the evils they hoped to escape--provided by publisher.

#3

One night in 1968, on the eve of the Russian invasion, 13 year-old Ondrej and his younger brother Kamil are bundled into a coach bound for their father's birthplace, a mountainous, forested village in northern Bohemia. But when they arrive it becomes clear that this escape promises its own perils, and the boys find themselves stranded in a rural community riven with petty suspicion and stained by prejudice, a borderland over which fleeing peoples, victims of genocide, and trigger-happy armies regularly tramp. Growing up in this dark, chaotic landscape, the two boys struggle to make a home for themselves, until a series of unexplained deaths push them to make bold decisions to ensure their survival.