Jirí Kratochvil

Maagisen realismin mestarin sarkasmia tihkuva romaani, jossa naiseksi muuttuva kettu ja salaisen poliisin nuori tähti rakastuvat kylmän sodan keskellä. Kuolaavista koiristaan tunnetussa I. P. Pavlovin instituutissa tehdään 1940-luvun lopulla läpimurto: luonnosta pyydystetty naaraskettu oppii puhumaan ihmiskieltä ja alkaa hiljalleen muuttua naiseksi. Valtias Stalin adoptoi Sylva-ketun tyttärekseen ja valmistelee tätä karmivaan tehtävään ulkomailla. Sylva on koulutettu hyvin, mutta häneltä puuttuu kokemus monista inhimillisistä tunteista, etenkin rakkaudesta. Toisaalla Brnossa metallipajan sorvarista Pavlíkista koulitaan poliisivoimien uutta tähteä. Poikkeuksellisen kielitaitonsa ja juonittelukykyjensä ansiosta Pavlík lähetetään Länsi-Saksaan varjostamaan tšekkiläistä emigranttia. Kun Pavlíkin ja Sylvan tiet kohtaavat amerikkalaisia ja vakoojia kuhisevassa Münchenissä, molempien uskollisuus valtion palveluksessa joutuu koetukselle. Kettu naiseksi -romaanissa Kratochvil punoo ketun muodonmuutostarinaan todellisia henkilöitä ja kylmän sodan raakuuksia. Kirjan rakenne mukailee Aristoteleen alku, keskikohta ja loppu -sääntöä, mutta muuten tarina uhmaa kaikenlaisia sääntöjä, eikä kertojakaan malta pysyä kirjan kulisseissa. Lopputulos on ironiaa ja sarkasmia tihkuva maagisen realismin mestariteos, joka paitsi naurattaa ja kauhistuttaa myös tarjoaa oivalluksia ihmisyyden ytimestä.

Can something that exists merely as a literary text, say a story, come about in real life? Can reality, to put it another way, steal something from literature, the same way literature steals from reality? Such is the question that Libor Hrach, the author of The Adventures of the Wise Badger, fields one evening over a hedonistic supper in a tony Brno restaurant from Kamil Modr ček, himself a burrowing animal of sorts, in Jiř Kratochvil's novel The Vow.'Quite simply, I said, everything that has been written either has already happened, or is about to. You write a story, and you can never be sure if what you're writing isn't actually taking place two streets away from where you sit...' If this does not send chills down the spine of the reader of The Vow, they have got a high tolerance for the creepy. Set in 1950s Brno, at the height of Gottwald's Stalinist reshaping of Czechoslovakia into a Communist prison, and partially in today's independent Czech Republic, Kratochvil, alternating between the dry Czech humour of Jaroslav Hasek and the uncanny, chilling otherworldliness of Edgar Allan Poe, takes the reader on a journey such as they have never been on before: to geographic areas in the beautiful Moravian city where no foot has set since the Middle Ages, and... places deep inside all of us, where most of us would rather never venture...

Can something that exists merely as a literary text, say a story, come about in real life? Can reality, to put it another way, steal something from literature, the same way literature steals from reality? Such is the question that Libor Hrach, the author of The Adventures of the Wise Badger, fields one evening over a hedonistic supper in a tony Brno restaurant from Kamil Modr ček, himself a burrowing animal of sorts, in Jiř Kratochvil's novel The Vow.'Quite simply, I said, everything that has been written either has already happened, or is about to. You write a story, and you can never be sure if what you're writing isn't actually taking place two streets away from where you sit...' If this does not send chills down the spine of the reader of The Vow, they have got a high tolerance for the creepy. Set in 1950s Brno, at the height of Gottwald's Stalinist reshaping of Czechoslovakia into a Communist prison, and partially in today's independent Czech Republic, Kratochvil, alternating between the dry Czech humour of Jaroslav Hasek and the uncanny, chilling otherworldliness of Edgar Allan Poe, takes the reader on a journey such as they have never been on before: to geographic areas in the beautiful Moravian city where no foot has set since the Middle Ages, and... places deep inside all of us, where most of us would rather never venture...