Following the international success of her novel Jezero (The Lake), which has been translated into 13 languages, Bianca Bellová returns with another dystopia.

Literary fiction  |  English sample translation available

In Bianca Bellová’s new novel we find ourselves in an unnamed country somewhere in the Middle East ruled by a religious dictatorship. In this land which has been destroyed by violent conflict, a nurse called Mona looks after soldiers in an improvised hospital in a situation where basic human rights, particularly women’s, are ignored. She meets a young boy, Adam, and the silence they share becomes a way to allow them both to remember. The past which is uncovered by delicately outlined scenes does not immediately reveal the characters’ motivations and the reader is kept in constant suspense throughout. Like The Lake, Mona has a mysterious, oppressive atmosphere, as well as a darkness. Here this is not only symbolized by the military conflict, the general poverty and disintegration, but also by the overgrown jungle and the tendrils of its plants which are unsettlingly inappropriate in this environment.

Bianca Bellová (1970) was born in Prague, where she lives halfway between the Balkan and British parts of her family. She is a writer, translator and interpreter. She has published several books of fiction, most notably the novel Jezero (The Lake, 2016) which has won a number of literary awards, including the 2017 EU Prize for Literature and the 2023 EBRD Literature Prize, and its publication rights have been sold to twenty-five countries. Her latest books are Ostrov (The Island, 2022) and Transfer (2023).