David Zábranský: Any Beach But This (Notes on the sea, laughter and the spirit of the times) / Slabost pro každou jinou pláž (Poznámky k moři, smíchu a duchu doby)

What does the human dance look like in the ruins of a concentration camp? Is love the expression of a desire to become the brothel-keeper of the whole world? Are we truly happy to relax on the beach of democracy for all time? And why, when we look around ourselves, do we see nothing but streams of cars?
The debut work of this young Czech author leaves the well-trodden paths of Czech prose far behind. With elegance and humour, and in an original form - that of an amoral Bildungsroman which does not develop - it projects the lives of characters who are deliberately stereotyped, who are symbols for and victims of their culture; in so doing it works through a wide range of themes, including suffering and tourism, Auschwitz and good-heartedness, the end of days and make-up.
We take towels in our hands. Everything is amusing when set against Auschwitz - shame at one's own bare behind vies with embarrassment at the poverty of one's thinking.
(description on the jacket flap of the book)

A surprisingly mature, verbally dexterous debut. We should not allow ourselves to be carried away by the subtitle, Notes on the sea, laughter and the spirit of the times. This is a novel of sophisticated design, with sharply-drawn characters who provide a canvas on which is addressed the topical issue of the relationship between the "mysterious", impoverished East and the consumerist West. It also provides an original take on the man-woman relationship.
(description by the organizers of the Magnesia Litera awards)

Notwithstanding its subtitle, this is not a book made up solely of notes; it creates a whole new world, as a novel should. I tried to make it good: it laughs (and expects the reader to laugh), thinks (and demands thinking of the reader), enthuses (it does not resist the joy language and fiction can give). At the same time it asks responsible questions of the world beyond the novel, using the answers in its attempt to understand what this world lacks.
There is no shortage of beautiful women, love and sandy beaches; there are cars, tenderness and death. It is an attempt to show how little it takes in terms of sand blown from the beach, how few buttons one needs to unfasten on a lover's dress, to elicit an unexpectedly false (or deep) tone.
Man and history: both tend to the ridiculous. And where we find the ridiculous we find laughter - and laughter is divine.
(abridged description by the author on the jacket flap of the book)

An author has appeared on our literary scene who promises to be a master exponent of the Czech 'lucid', offering a truthful, sober and clear view of the world. Zábránský's novel is an uncommonly remarkable debut.
(Václav Jamek, jacket flap of the book)